PRESS RELEASE: Here at Xerox Corporation we've got a problem and we think we can fix it in 2008 with a brand makeover. Customers are being drawn to Canon, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba. Don't even mention Nokia or Apple! We have said goodbye to our almost 50 year old logo. Today we'd like you to meet our new logo.

Dilanchian Lawyers & Consultants have never advised us. But like Xerox they know documents and innovation.

We figure there is no harm allowing them this friendly hoax press release. After all, Noric Dilanchian loves us. The guy can't stop writing about Xerox since 1991 (see his list below). We appreciate his obsession!

We agree with him. Obtaining solid legal protection for a trade mark requires design work. This includes what Dilanchian terms "legal design" [Video], ie legally-informed design.

We buy that. The Xerox name has legal design. Although it's derived from the noun, xerography, it is short, original or inventive enough to be highly protectable as a trade mark worldwide.

The folks at Dilanchian can help you do this too with their full trade mark registration service [PDF]. You'll pay no more and get way more than just straight law.

Sure, they can do straight trade mark registration work for you. But they offer a whole lot more in the way of creative branding advice. Depending on your requirements they'll X-ray your situation and needs using their range of tools and templates. Here's a list from their library of branding tools and templates:

• Brand Architecture - helps clarify and integrate brand elements for clear messages
• Positioning Questionnaire - helps calibrate your brand positioning 
• Brand Design Brief - use this to brief a graphic designer or other creatives or talent
• Brand and Identity Table - on one page this profiles a brand, its labels and registrations
• Brands Legal and Marketing Table - aligns legal and marketing needs served by a brand 
• Intellectual Property Register - records data that excites investors and lawyer types
• Intellectual Property Policy - sets policies for how, when, why, who and on what basis

At Xerox we agree with Dilanchian. Think outside legal straitjackets to achieve a good return on investment from trademarks and brand makeovers. If registrations are all you get from your lawyer or trade mark attorney, perhaps you are paying too much?

-----------------------------------------------------------

Noric Dilanchian's obsession with Xerox:

• Technology Commercialisation: Legal Tools [1991 paper, covers Carlson and his xerography invention[
• IP strategy and the rise and rise of Bill Gates [1994 article, published in The Australian about the consequences of legal and commercialisation failures in the 1970s at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)]
  
• The most successful product ever marketed in America" [2006, full study on the making of Xerox to early 1970s]
• Business model defined [2007, another look at the history of Xerox's PARC]
  
• Picking a Trade Mark  [VIDEO]