Member Blog

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal addresses the fascinating topic of scent marks. While the marketing world is increasingly exploring the possibilities of advertising through appeals to our senses other than sight, among them touch and smell, the question arises as to whether scent marks can be protected legally – and hence carry value for their holders.

While in the US some scent marks have received the USPTO examiner’s approval, and descriptions such as ‘the mark consists of the scent of’ bubble gum, oranges, piña colada, vanilla, and so on can be read in the Register, this is not the case in the EU or in Switzerland. Indeed, for a mark to be registered in those jurisdictions, it must first be capable of being represented graphically. Failing that, a mark can simply not be registered in a paper or electronic Register.

Capturing the scent There is a reason for this. Indeed, the problem with scent marks may be more technical than legal, as the case of the Eddy Finn Ukulele Company’s piña colada-scented ukuleles shows. This company, which sells ukuleles smelling of piña coladas, discovered that ukuleles they had shipped to overseas markets had lost their scent during the trip.

The volatility of scents is not the only issue, however. As any perfume-wearer would know, scents also evolve with time and moreover are perceived differently from one person to another. And these problems also have implications for the registration process. What should be filed? Bottled samples, whose content will change over time, and which two different examiners will perceive in different ways? Chemical formulas?Descriptions? The answer has yet to be found. Moreover, if we keep in mind that the function of a mark is to distinguish brands from each other, this might prove to be quite the challenge when dealing with two marks ‘consisting of the scent of oranges’, for example.

That said, scents remain a wonderful marketing tool worth exploring. When we recall that smell is the sense that conveys the strongest emotional value of all and that emotions play a crucial role in consumer behaviour, the massive potential of scents in the market becomes clear. We all have our madeleine of Proust, and smell can bring to the surface feelings and sensations that were deeply buried within us and thought lost forever.

Similarly, studies have shown that the smell of vanilla has a calming effect on cattle, and this has led to the wide use of this scent in the feed industry. A pleasant scent could have the power to blur the sensation of time for consumers and modify their visual or taste perceptions in ways that may encourage them to purchase more. This power is already being harnessed in boutiques and malls around the world: Abercrombie & Fitch, with its signature scent ‘Fierce’, and Verizon Wireless, with the ‘flowery musk’ that perfumes its stores, are two major players that use scent marketing with flair.

Anca Draganescu is IP counsel at Novagraaf in Switzerland

We have been working on the Search Engine Optimisation forQuiddi Compare (https://quiddicompare.co.uk/) for just over 6 months. Seach Engine Optmisation, also known as SEO, involves using a host of techniques toboost one’sposition on Google for hundreds and thousands of relevant keywords. After implementing ourSEO changes, it usually takes Google around 6 months to show your true results. You may find that your rankings flunctuate a lot in the early days but by 6 months, Google has a better indication of your site’s worth and can rank you accordingly.

So now that we’ve done our 6 months for Quiddi, one of the leading loan comparison sites in the UK,we can finally see the results of our hard work which include a first page position for ‘compare payday loans,’ ‘payday loan comparison’ and ‘best payday loans.’

Our Approach

We had to be careful. The SEO techniques in the UK for the payday loans industry are notoriously spammy, something that actually caused Matt Cutts, the head of Search at Google to issue a specific Payday Loan Algorithm to tidy things up (find the video below). This algorithm means companies trying to rank for payday loans receive special attention. Accordingly,your SEO techniques need to be whiter than white to provide sustainable results. If you plan to use thin content which is duplicatedor generate unnatural links, you will be penalised. With this in mind, we executed the following strategy:

Content –We created useful and resourceful information surrounding all the different types of loans, credit cards and mortgages. We created a source of information so whether it was in the main body or on the sidebar, you could find every bit of information that you need. This achieved to keep users on the site for longer because the information was relevant to them.

Links –The SEO for loans can be very spammy. So rather than buying links from unknown and irrelevant websites, we made a relationship with every company we got a link from so it looked as natural as possible, including PR in news articles and money guides.

User Experience –The user experience is more and more important in Google’s eyes. To emphasize this, we put the site on a secure service (https), made the site responsive (and mobile friendly) and included a host of images and videos to create an overall great experience for customers.

Social –We worked on the social media following for the website to follow the premise that a site with more tweets and shares looks more relevant than one without. We ran competitions on facebook and twitter and included iPad giveaways to generate social traction.

Looking further ahead, we are creating various tools and widgets for users to play around with and find the best loan product for them. We want to show the search engines that we are more than just content and loans but somewhere you can get advice and insight that you won’t find anywhere else.

Some might ask what is the difference between computing in a village, a town or a city? The answer probably comes down to how many community hubs (pubs) there are within a 10 or 15 minute walk. In other words not a lot of difference. Although there is a need to walk through the community, whatever the location,and make those connections worth making and ignoring everything else, unless it is in your face. By making these connections a software developer is able to practice their art.

I have found that a quick dash to the shop to talk to the lady serving and sometimes the odd customer makes for the removal of any mental blocks that might be occurring.

A Software developer (coder / programmer) requires what many others also require. Three meals a day, punctuated with the odd snack (Fruit :), or Eccles cakes – used to be chocolate), a roof over their head, decent tech to work with, and funds to pay for overheads. These days you could throw in a decent internet connection also.

Why is it a challenge? If the days work is not a challenge then you are not making forward progress. If things seem too easy then I get the feeling that something is wrong. It might just be me, everything is a challenge to me (feels like running uphill all the time), it makes life interesting and it keeps the largest muscle in my body happily exercised. Sometimes (well quite often actually) this muscle tells me to go to the pub and have my one pint.

I shall say that there is a beautiful moment in any workday when the challenge disappears and the last peice of the jigsaw puzzle falls into place. This is momentary until the next challenge presents itself.

The fact that the business is situated in South Norfolk has importance for two reasons: 1.it is close to the Suffolk border, 2. It allows for inclusion in the Norfolk Chamber. Being close to Suffolk is good as it is a whole different market place to sell into, and inclusion in the Norfolk Chamber has many benefits, one of which is this forum.

I seek the next Challenge.

Getting listed on Google’s first results page can be very difficult. There are many tools and services that promise to get your website listed. What exactly will help you to get the results that you want? There are five things that will get your website on Google’s first results page. Guaranteed.

The key to high rankings:

Step 1: You have to know what you’re doing

Don’t just blindly follow the advice of gurus and self-proclaimed ‘SEO experts’. Don’t believe everything that you read. When it comes to search engine optimisation, most things are opinions instead of facts.

Do your own tests. Create a website just for testing purposes and find out what works and what doesn’t. Educate yourself and keep current. That is very important because ‘SEO’ changes rapidly.

Step 2: You have to work with your web pages

Some people think that search engine optimiszation is a one-shot thing, or that ‘SEO’ can be done on auto-pilot. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work.

If you want to succeed, you have to invest a lot of time and effort in your search engine optimisation activities. There are several things that you have to do to make sure that your website becomes a success: keyword research, optimising pages, fixing technical errors, etc.

Without investing time and work into your web pages, you won’t get the best results. Fortunately, there are tools that will help you to get things done as efficiently as possible.

Step 3: Show search engines that you’re serious about it

Google wants to rank high quality websites in the search results. This is the mysterious “authority” that is often mentioned in SEO articles.

To build a website that has ranking authority, you have to do several things: create web pages that have good content, present that content in an attractive way and engage with your audience. Basically, your website has to deliver what the web searchers wants.

Step 4: Be smarter than your competitors

Everybody wants to be listed on Google’s first results page. The person who does more, will get better rankings. If your competitors invest more time in search engine optimisation, they will get better rankings.

It’s also important that you invest your time in the right things. A person who is working a lot on the wrong things won’t get good results. If you work smarter than your competitors, you will get better results. If you do the right things in the right order, you will get results more quickly. Here’s an easy to understand step-by-step tutorial.

Step 5: Be patient

Website promotion takes time. It is possible to get some quick wins but lasting results that will deliver a steady stream of new visitors to your website take some time.It takes time to research the right keywords, it takes time to optimise your web pages, it takes time to fix the architecture of your website, etc. Be patient, do the right things, and your website will get the rankings that it deserves.

Website promotion isn’t rocket science. The five steps above are a sure way to get in Google’s search results.

CRITICAL MAGENTO UPDATE:

The Magento team released a critical security patch (SUPEE-5344) to address a remote command execution (RCE) vulnerability back in February. It’s been more than two months since the release and still more than 50% of all the Magento installations have not been patched, leaving them open to attacks.

This means hundreds of thousands of websites are vulnerable right now, worst yet they are e-Commerce websites. This means that they are used to sell goods online, capturing personal identifiable information (PII), including credit card information. The impacts of Magento websites getting compromised can be devastating for every online buyer that uses or has used a website built on the platform.

This is a very serious vulnerability, it allows allows an attacker to run any command they want on the server, allowing them to take full ownership of the vulnerable online shop and it’s associated web server.

Full Disclosure Going Live in a couple of days

This vulnerability was discovered by the Check Point research team and reported to Magento back in January. They gave us an early warning to help spread the word to as many Magento admins as possible. In a few days (likely this Monday or Tuesday – April 21st), they will release full details of the vulnerability on their blog. Once the details are released, it is expected that within hours there will be a working Proof of Concept (PoC) available for the masses. The severity of this issue cannot be understated, we cannot stress the importance of patching immediately.

If you own a Magento site, you must patch it immediately! Go to the download page, search for SUPEE-5344 and follow the instructions.

There has been a definite increase in the number of reports on webmaster forums, including the Google ones, and many of the reports involve the popular WordPress plugin Wordfence.

Google has never published a list of IPs they crawl from, as those IPs can change at any time. They also have bots used for specific products as well, such as the ones for Google AdSense and Google AdWords.

One of the issues is Google the Local-aware crawling by Googlebot, which not only come from completely new IPs, but also from countries and IPs based outside of the US, which seems to be triggering false positives in bot blocking scripts. If you are unsure if the Googlebot visiting is a real one or not, you can do a reverse DNS lookup to confirm.

Why do people block bots? A variety of reasons – to block server load, to block attacks, to prevent fake referrals. Generally users will white list with a list of known Googlebot IPs, as many people will spoof Googlebot, but when Google switches up the IPs and a user inadvertently blocks Googlebot, it can take quite some time to rectify this situation.

This was part of a threat from a user in WebMasterWorld:

“I have a system that prevents ‘bots from crawling my site. It has a whitelist, to which I add Google IPs. I had always added them manually because new IPs didn’t come up too often, and I wanted to make sure that no one was spoofing Google. About 10 days ago, Google apparently switched to crawling from about a dozen new IPs. I was not paying close attention to my system and those IPs got blocked. They were blocked for about 3 or 4 days.” …

“The traffic picked up a little bit, but slowly. Google wasn’t adding the pages back even though they had recrawled them. Some pages came back, but some of my top pages (for example, Connor McDavid) were nowhere to be found in Google – even when I searched with my site’s name (as many users do). I tried asking Google to recrawl multiple times, but after a week they still aren’t adding back pages for which I request a recrawl.”

Google management also commented today on the Google Webmaster Help forums with the same situation, where a site is blocking Googlebot.

Blocking googlebotWordfence, a popular WordPress plugin for blocking bots, is one that repeatedly comes up, with both the free and paid versions having issues.

Hosting companies can also block Googlebot to save server resources. Many, many years ago, GoDaddy hosting blocked Googlebot from crawling all the sites they were hosting for their hosting clients.

Bottom line, if you are using any kind of bot blocking script, you will want to check Google Webmaster Tools daily (if not more than once a day) to check on any issues with Googlebot being blocked.

Grants of between £5,000 and £500,000 are available from our Growing Business Fund. As the new financial year kicks in, we thought it would be a great opportunity to give you some top tips on securing a grant, which is funding you don’t pay back.

New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership helps to drive business growth and enterprise in Norfolk and Suffolk and we’ve secured funding from Government for companies in the two counties which want to grow their business and employ more people.

We’ve given grants to more than 180 companies since April 2013. But, what is the criteria and which other businesses have been successful?

Here are our top tips.

• You need to be looking to invest, expand and recruit new staff
• You must be an established and growing SME in Norfolk or Suffolk and your project must be based in one or other of the counties
• What’s the project? You need to be considering something really tangible to help your growth plans. You may need new equipment, or machinery or to buy larger premises.
• The Growing Business Fund can provide up to 20% of the cost of the total funding you need. However, you must be able to secure at least 80% from private funds such as a bank, your business, other investors etc.
• You need to demonstrate why you’ve been unable to secure all the funding you require from other financial sources, be it a loan or another grant scheme.
• It’s really important that you meet the criteria and supply all the information we need in your application. The full criteria is here.

Companies which have secured grants range from manufacturers to digital companies and specialist food companies to sign-makers. Here are some case studies of justsome of the local companies who’ve received grants from our Growing Business Fund, to help them grow. Click here

Find out more:

Visit our Growing Business Fund web page here

Phone our New Anglia Growth Hub on 0300 333 6536 and meet up with one of our Growth Hub Advisers to get some free face-to-face advice or mail [email protected]

Watch a short video of three businesses which have benefited from grants here

If you’re looking for new premises, it’s worth widening your range of options. By choosing to renovate a derelict building in a disadvantaged area, you could benefit from a significant tax break.

Not many people are aware of the Business Premises Renovation Allowance (BPRA), but it’s certainly worth finding out more if you’re in the market for a new office, factory or business site.

When you buy a derelict building, you’d obviously need to undertake renovations to ensure it’s in a usable state. When you do, it’s not deemed to be a ‘repair’ for tax purposes, but is seen instead as a capital cost. Tax relief against profits are minimal (possibly related to integral features, such as electrics and plumbing).

With BPRA, you can claim upfront tax relief for the costs of renovation if (a) the property is in a disadvantaged area; (b) the building has been unused for at least a year; and (c) the premises were previously used for commercial purposes rather than as residences.

It’s worth making a couple of points of clarification on these criteria. First, it’s possible to discover whether your proposed property is in an area considered to be disadvantaged by using a postcode checker on the Department for Business Innovation & Skills website. Second, the requirement for a property to be unused for a year doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be unused at the time of purchase. Provided a year elapses before any work starts, you can still qualify for BPRA.

As you might expect, the preferential tax arrangements are designed to stimulate business and help to regenerate areas that have previously been struggling. Under EU state aid legislation, costs of renovation are restricted to €20 million, although obviously many businesses will be making investments well within this figure.

It’s important to note that there’s no allowance for the cost of the land or for extending the premises, although you do get a 100% write-off for tax purposes on the other renovations. What’s more, it won’t be clawed back as long as you don’t sell the building within five years from the date it became available for use.

This relief is only available until 2017, so it’s important to think now about how you might take advantage of it in the next couple of years. It’s a specialist area, so ensure that you take the necessary advice from your accountant.

Fleet services can be invaluable for companies [Small fleets rely on swift maintenance solutions and clever fleet management to flourish] of any size, but for businesses that only require a small fleet, the benefits are practically endless. Whatever the industry, from construction to catering, van hire can offer huge financial and practical advantages to small businesses.

Cost Cutting

Venson Automotive Solutions recently conducted a survey of its customers, and a huge 89% majority agreed that containing costs was their biggest worry for the coming year. Many small businesses are feeling ongoing pressure to keep a constant close eye on their cashflow, and in light of ever-rising fuel prices, vehicle costs are an unsavoury subject. Without millions to spend on transport and logistics, small businesses could avoid the many costs associated with transport and logistics through van hire.

Van hire when you want it, where you want it

Short term van leasing could allow your small company to hold off on long-term commitment, letting you test out a fleet expansion while gradually adjusting to changes in the workplace, such as seasonal staff hire, or team expansions. If your company doesn’t need the extra vehicles somewhere down the line, you’re not under any obligation to keep them, allowing real flexibility and making great financial sense.

Avoid Breakdown Disasters

Venson cites that only around 20% of organisations consider a vehicle’s whole life cost when calculating the expense of running a fleet, ignoring the multiple factors that can potentially add huge costs on to your transport throughout the year. Downtime and maintenance costs are serious matters for any size of business, but can potentially cripple a small fleet, as it is far harder to make up for the fall in productivity, and financial repercussions may be more severe in the context of small business budgets.

Ford Retail conducted research with 250 small business owners in late 2013, and revealed that fleet vehicles each spend an average of four days off the road per year, typically costing a business at least £200 per day in loss of manpower and productivity.

Leasing your fleet can take away this stress, as dedicated and knowledgeable fleet management teams will provide constant customer care for breakdown and recovery. The reality with private ownership is that all responsibility falls to you to arrange for maintenance and repair, which is performed by a garage on commission. In contrast, when maintenance and breakdown recovery is provided by your fleet leasing company, you are the number one priority, and no one will be taking you for a ride.

Hired Help

Last year, Rob Gray of HR Magazine stated that dedicated in-house fleet managers are becoming more and more of a rarity, as companies increasingly outsource the function, in order to benefit from the insight of an industry expert and navigate tightening budgets. Specialist fleet managers are, naturally, experts in the fleet services world, and can quickly and easily deal with any difficulties you might have with speed, experience and professionalism.

For small businesses with limited resources and manpower, organisation is everything, and having a talented fleet manager on hand can make the difference between chaos and perfect co-ordination.

The ‘sunrise period’ opened recently for the new .sucks extension, giving brand owners an advance opportunity to register their trademarks as domain names – for commercial or defensive reasons. Once the sunrise period comes to an end, on 29 May 2015, registration will be open to all. How should trademark holders approach this potentially damaging extension?

As the number of top-level domains (TLDs) continues to expand, trademark holders are having to assess each TLD launch for both opportunity and risk. Opportunity to market to customers in new and more innovative ways, versus the risk of opening up their brand to infringement activity, loss of revenue or reputation damage if they decide not to pursue registrations for the new extension.

For many well-known brands, that risk will be particularly acute following the launch of the .sucks domain name extension on 30 March.

Between a rock and a hard place Whereas some new extensions (such as .luxury, .bank, .clothing or .bike) may enhance the reputation of a brand or its trademarks, by showing immediately to which category the service or product belongs, the .sucks extension has more detrimental implications. It has been set up to give the public the opportunity to criticise a company or brand, albeit with certain limitations.

The question facing companies, therefore, is whether they should defensively register .sucks domain names for their trademarks to stop others from setting up sites to target their brands.

The sunrise period offers them the opportunity for advance registration; however, to be eligible, marks need to be recorded at the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). Sunrise registration for .sucks is also more costly than for general registration. A domain name under this new extension costs 2,950 euro (per year) during sunrise, with the fee expected to drop considerably once the sunrise period ends.

Pursuing such a defensive strategy is costly in other ways too. If you decide to block .sucks activity, then what about other potentially damaging URLs? Where should you draw the line?

Monitoring for misuse A lot of it will depend on how high profile your business is – and how likely it is to be targeted and/or harmed by a .sucks registration. Many brand owners may choose instead to simply monitor the .sucks launch to see how it develops in the market. Not every new TLD will be successful – some will be picked up by consumers, while others won’t. Some companies may even view .sucks as a legitimate forum for customer feedback.

Nonetheless, monitoring will be key. Novagraaf’s NovaTrack web-monitoring tool provides a simple and cost-effective means of keeping on top of sensitive third-party registrations, such as .sucks. The tool will also capture evidence of infringement or malicious activity should a brand owner seek to take legal steps to close down or retrieve a domain name; for example, via WIPO’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) procedure.

Click here for tips and advice on developing an effective domain name registration strategy.Click here to sign up for alerts on new domain name extensions that are opening for registration.

Most of us approach the Easter break with resolutions to spring clean our homes, sort out our gardens or otherwise declutter our lives, and our working lives are not much different. Busy desks and inboxes, meetings and to-do lists; it’s no wonder that we often leave the ‘big’ projects for quieter times.

If you’re looking for a good project to get your teeth into after the bank holidays, then you could do worse than choosing your IP portfolio. Frequently bloated with unused registrations or starved with gaps in coverage, spring cleaning your IP via a detailed audit could help you to identify ways to streamline your portfolio, saving you money while also improving the efficiency of your assets.

Where to begin Many companies estimate the healthiness and relative worth of their IP portfolios based on size alone. However, those IP rights will be worth far less if the following checks and balances aren’t also considered. We find that many companies can reduce their spending on IP matters and ringfence the strength of their rights by auditing their IP portfolios, using the following three-step process.

Step 1: Review your IP records and data for accuracy The data in your IP portfolio needs to be accurate and up-to-date, otherwise you may find that you don’t quite own the rights that you think you do. Taking the time now to cleanse, update and rationalise your IP data can save you both time and money in the long-run, as it will identify errors in the records, as well as unnecessary costs such as duplicate registrations (e.g between national and CTM rights).

Centralising IP ownership can also help you to avoid unnecessary costs and risks, e.g. due to refusals or duplicate records. This also enables companies to file oppositions or to act against infringement on behalf of one formal party, instead of being forced to initiate double procedures in case of decentralised ownership.

Step 2: Audit your IP portfolio for value A regular IP audit enables you to assess the value of your portfolio against the costs involved in growing and maintaining the IP rights it contains. It helps to identify, for example, trademark rights that are being renewed despite never being used, as well as gaps in protection, which might leave a company exposed. To undertake this audit, we would first recommend:

• Reviewing your IP strategy to ensure that it takes into account your strategic business goals;
• Prioritising your IP rights (e.g. between ‘core’ and ‘non-core’), and markets (countries and goods/services) based on current branding/R&D strategy and future plans;
• Auditing licensing and royalty agreements to ensure that the rights have been correctly maintained and the revenues received; and
• Reviewing your supplier list to see if it is possible to generate further cost savings by consolidating your IP portfolio with one provider.

Step 3: Conduct regular healthchecks Completing an IP audit is only the first step in what should be a regular programme of portfolio reviews. By conducting audits at regular intervals (ideally at least every six months), you can ensure that your portfolio continues to evolve as your business does, and it could also identify additional savings in the future; for example, by:

• Merging registrations;
• Allowing possible duplicate (local) registrations to lapse; and
• Identifying unexploited rights that could be sold, licensed or allowed to lapse.

Around one in five managers who have responsibility over fleet operations claim that administration tasks have become more time-intensive over the past year. Luckily, overworked fleet managers could benefit from van leasing deals that support their efforts.

More administration and multi-tasking

GE CapitalFleet Services recently released their quarterly Company Car Trendsresearch, which found that 20% of fleet managers (whose primary job role was fleet related) had experienced an increase in administrative duties.

A similar increase was reported by 17% of managers with a wider remit beyond fleet management. When questioned about their primary job role, 25% stated that they were operations based, while another 22% were in finance, 18% in administration and 16% in human resources.

While this research focused primarily on company cars, it’s likely that this situation is very similar, if not worse, in the case of commercial vehicle fleets.

Getting tied up in fleet management issues

Gary Killeen, managing director at GE Capital UK Fleet Services, explained: “We believe that these figures show two key findings.

“Firstly, and most obviously, a sizeable number of managers involved in running fleets are seeing a year-on-year increase in the amount of administrative work they have to undertake.

“It is the second finding that we find more interesting. It clearly shows that managers who become involved in fleet decisions, and for whom company cars and vans are not their primary responsibility, increasingly get tied up in fleet issues.

“This is especially true in areas such as operations, finance and human resources. For these core functions, fleet administration is eating up a greater amount of work time and it appears that this is a situation that is increasing quite quickly.”

Fleet compliance gets more complicated

There are several reasons that explain the growing amount of administration in fleet management.

We recently examined the importance of fleet compliance in detail, and found significant financial, legal and moral implications for fleet managers who fail to keep on top of vehicle and driver standards. An employee has a Duty of Care to at-work drivers, and fleet managers may be under pressure to enforce fleet compliance measures.

Environmental responsibilities are also making it more complicated to run a vehicle fleet, particularly for businesses which use large commercial vehicles. In urban centres such as London, strict new legislations have been introduced to curb air pollution levels and fine non-compliant fleets.

Van leasing companies can help your fleet

Multi-tasking managers can struggle with fleet management responsibilities, and it isn’t a huge surprise. There’s a lot to consider when running a commercial vehicle fleet, and if your background is in finance or HR it’s unlikely that you will be aware of all the current legislation and best practices.

By outsourcing some aspects of fleet management to a professional van leasing company, a business can take some pressure off managers who are working across various different departments. We provide all our contract hire customers with all-inclusive vehicle maintenance and servicing, so you don’t need to worry about passing MOTs or arranging roadside assistance.