Should You Worry About Wax Melt Names & Trademarks?

Reasons behind the name changes

In 2020 we launched Aroma Luxe, back then we saw a number of pop-up candle and wax melt makers in the UK using “Aroma” in the branding, we also received some negative reviews which were not meant for us as they purchased from other online traders with a similar name, this made us think more about our branding and how we need to distinguish ourselves.

So, this year we rebranded our logo, registered our trademark and have learnt a lot about copyright and other trademarked materials. This helped us notice a number of scents and fragrance oils we were using had potential trademark issues and we thought it would be right to correct them.

What happens if you use a trademarked name?

If you use someone's trademark without first obtaining consent or without a legal right to do so, the trademark owner can sue you for trademark infringement. 

Why have we changed some of our fragrance names?

The main reason was to be honest and respectful of the rightful trademark owner, as we are relatively new to business we have been a little naïve on how a business should run, and maybe overlooked a few minor issues. I suspect this is how most businesses start out, and we are continuing our learning process and trying to be the best wax melt supplier in the UK. The way I see it is I have learned so much from my mistakes, I'm thinking of making a few more. 😜

What does this mean?

To be honest, you probably wouldn't notice, but if you did or would like to know some of these differences and how we corrected them then here are some of the changes we made…

“Same scent, different name”

Scent Names Change (New VS Old)

Here is a few of the scent name changes you may have seen on our website…

But some look very close to the original?

Yes, but a few things that need to be taken into account. Firstly is it trademarked, if so in what category? The next thing you can look for are slight name changes and using disclaimers, this can be the most effective method as trademarks are issued by the name and the category, not so much by the contents. for example if we were a baker and wanted to launch our own branded bread I would use the same ingredients to make the same product but I wouldn’t be allowed to use the same trademarked name, such as Hovis or Warburtons.

As we deal with fragrance and smells this is usually in the same category as designer fragrances such as perfume or aftershave, so we can use the similarities of scent but not the trademark name along with the scent…like I said this is a brief overview and legislation does change and probably will as time goes on, other variations of trademarks such as smell marks will probably start to emerge, but this is a very grey area at the moment.

Can you Trademark a smell?

Usually trademarks are only for the fragrance name, not the fragrance itself. if a company wanted to trademark the actual fragrance they would have to get a chemical patent, This is a very strict process where only a very few are approved.

We hope this article helped you understand a little bit more about our products, trademarking and possibly how to help you develop any business ideas in the future, but most importantly how to skip some of the mistakes we made along the way.