Assignment of your ownership in a trademark

What’s an assignment of your ownership of trademarks and when should you use it?

A trademark assignment is the transfer of an owner’s rights of one or more trademarks to another party.

Assignment agreements both provide records of ownership and transfer and protect the rights of all parties.

A trademark transfer is typically accomplished through an assignment which is a legally binding contract.

Use this template assignment agreement to transfer your ownership of one or more trademarks to someone else.

An assignment is different to a licence, which is a grant of permission to use a trademark in some restricted way (e.g. a limited time, specific purpose, particular area etc).

If you are looking to licence the use of your trademark you should use our trademark licencing template 

Trademark protects IP such as brand names, slogans, and logos from being used by other businesses.

There are two types of trademarks: registered ones and unregistered ones.

Depending on your circumstances, you may need to cover both of them in your assignment.

To be able to assign trademarks (or to licence them), you’ll need to demonstrate that you own them, or that you’re in the process of applying for registration and ownership.

Your ownership position will affect the wording that is used in your agreement, such as whether you’re assigning the trademarks with ‘full title guarantee’, or what’s called an assignment ‘subject to encumbrances’, which puts your assignee on notice that you may not entirely own these IP rights.

It will also affect the warranties that you may be expected to give in this type of transaction.

The assignment document is produced in the form of a deed.

Deeds are contracts, but they have more exacting signature provisions, incorporating witnesses of signatures, which means they tend to be used in certain circumstances where a straightforward contract would be considered insufficient.

It’s considered the most appropriate way to evidence that the IP owner fully intends to transfer valuable property to someone else.

What else might you need?

If you are looking to have IP ownership transferred to you then you should use our other template IP assignment.