In this article
You've spent years building a name customers recognise — and that name may never have legally been yours.
Most operators find this out at the worst possible moment: a near-identical name opens two streets over, a franchise candidate wants to use your brand and there's nothing stopping them, or someone else registers your name first — and you're the one forced to change it. You may have traded under that name for years, on your signage, your menus, your Google Business Profile. That builds goodwill, but in most EU countries it doesn't create an enforceable exclusive right. Registration does.
Almost every guide to trademarks online stops at "register it, it matters" — without the numbers that actually decide it. This article does the opposite: 7 concrete numbers, from the filing cost to the bill that lands on you if you wait and end up forced to rebrand. At the end sits a calculator that runs your own situation — how many countries, how many classes, what scale of business — instead of a rule of thumb.
Two things up front. First, this article is about protecting your business's name and logo as a trademark — not the licences you need to open (see our guide on restaurant permits & licenses) and not what your business is worth if you sell it (our valuation & takeover calculator prices that — a registered trademark is exactly the kind of transferable asset it accounts for). Second, this is not legal advice. The figures below are based on the EU-wide EUIPO system (Regulation (EU) 2017/1001) and illustrative national fees; have a trademark attorney review your own situation before you file anything or let a deadline lapse.
The 7 numbers behind a protected name
Each number below stands on its own, but they build on each other — number 7 is where the first six come together.
1. Why your business's name isn't automatically yours
Most EU countries — and the EU-wide EUIPO system — run on registration, not on use. That's a meaningful difference from what most operators assume by instinct. Years of trading under a name builds, at best, limited, local goodwill — sometimes enough to fend off a very late copycat in your own city, rarely enough to stop someone who registers that same name officially first. Whoever files first usually wins the right, not whoever opened first.
That's exactly why a near-identical name opening two streets over, or a competitor copying your concept under a slightly different name, costs so little to happen — and so much to fight after the fact. Without registration you're arguing from a weak position: no lawyer's letter that lands with force, no injunction you're confident of winning, at best a claim of unfair competition that's slow and weak in most countries. With a registered trademark you have an exclusive right you can enforce from day one — that's the difference between "I've used this name for years" and "this name is legally mine."
2. What one filing for all of Europe costs — versus a filing that stops at the border
At the EU trademark office, EUIPO, one application for one class of goods or services costs €850, with €50 extra for a second class and €150 extra for every class from the third onward. That single filing protects your name across all 27 EU member states at once — you don't file 27 separate times. A national-only filing, for example through the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (illustrative: roughly €244 online for one class), is cheaper in absolute euros, but only covers three countries — Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg — instead of 27.
Work it out per country and the picture flips entirely: an EU-wide filing for one class costs roughly €31 per country covered; a Benelux filing costs roughly €81 per country covered for that same one class — and the moment you open even a single location outside the Benelux, that national filing gives you zero protection there. For a business that will only ever exist on one spot, a national filing is often enough. The moment you so much as consider growing across a border — a second location, a franchise, a delivery zone that crosses one — the EU-wide filing is the cheaper choice, not the more expensive one.
One filing for three countries (Benelux) next to one filing for 27 (EUIPO) — for the same class, the cost per country changes drastically
National filing (e.g. Benelux) — €298
EU-wide filing (EUIPO) — €900
Calculate this with your own number of classes in the calculator below — the amount per country moves with how many classes you file for.
3. The clock: how long a filing takes, and the window in which someone can object
If nobody objects, an EUIPO application typically takes about 4 to 6 months to registration — roughly 22 weeks is the figure EUIPO itself often quotes. Inside that period sits a fixed 3-month window, starting from the publication of your application, in which the holder of an earlier, similar mark can formally object (opposition). That window can't be shortened — it's built into the process precisely so existing trademark holders get the chance to respond before your mark becomes final.
For most applications, that window passes quietly: nobody objects, and the registration becomes final once the waiting period ends. But the clock is running while you wait — a name you're already trading under but haven't yet filed is, every month that passes, a month more exposed to someone else who moves faster. Registration isn't something you get to "someday"; it's a clock that only starts on the day you file.
4. What it costs if someone does object
If the holder of an earlier mark formally objects within that 3-month window, the bill changes drastically. A contested opposition typically runs €1,500 to €6,000 or more in legal fees, depending on how far the case goes — from an initial written exchange to a full substantive proceeding — and adds another 6 to 12 months or longer on top of the time you'd already spent waiting.
That number is exactly why "we'll register it later" isn't a safe, cost-neutral choice. The longer you wait to file, the greater the chance someone else beats you to it — and if that happens while you're already trading under the name, you're the one carrying the cost and the delay, not whoever filed first. The filing fee from number 2 is a fraction of what a contested proceeding costs; filing early isn't cautious, it's cheap.
5. The bill if you wait and end up forced to rebrand
If you eventually lose the right to your name — because someone else registered it first, or because an opposition against you succeeds — what follows is a rebrand that rarely fits into a single line item: new signage and shopfront lettering, reprinted menus and packaging, new uniforms, a new domain and website, and rebuilding your Google Business Profile and search visibility from zero — exactly the kind of visibility our guides on local SEO and being found in AI search engines describe building.
There's no single figure that fits every business — the bill depends on how much established brand recognition you lose. But as a rough, illustrative order of magnitude: a small, single-location business is already looking at €5,000 to €15,000, a medium-sized business at €15,000 to €40,000, and a multi-location or franchise-adjacent business at €40,000 to €120,000 or more. Compare that with the filing cost from number 2 and the gap isn't subtle — it's the whole reason this article exists.
The filing-and-renewal cost next to an illustrative estimate of what rebuilding the brand costs if you lose the name — not a quote for one specific business
Register now (filing + renewal) — €1,800
Forced rebrand later (illustrative) — €15,000–€40,000
The rebrand split is an illustrative, commonly-seen structure — not a quote for your business. Both bars are scaled to their real total, so the length of each bar shows the size gap too.
6. The number behind an annual trademark watch
Registration protects your right, but it doesn't automatically warn you when someone else tries to register a similar name — you have to watch for that yourself, or outsource it. An annual trademark watch (monitoring) service typically costs €150 to €400 a year and scans new filings inside and outside the EU for names that sit too close to yours, so you can react inside the 3-month opposition window (number 3) instead of finding out only after they've already been trading under it for a year.
Set that annual figure against what number 4 shows (what a contested case costs) and what number 5 shows (what a forced rebrand costs) — a watch service is the cheapest point in this entire chain to catch a problem early, before it becomes something far more expensive to notice late.
7. The ten-year cycle — and why a buyer checks it first
A trademark isn't a one-off cost. An EUIPO registration runs for 10 years and then has to be renewed, at roughly the same fee structure as the original filing (~€850 for one class). That's small against what it removes: ten years with no question over who's allowed to use the name, ten years in which the name is a transferable asset rather than a liability.
And that transferability is exactly why this is the number a buyer or a franchise candidate checks first. Our own valuation & takeover calculator already prices goodwill into a sale — but goodwill with no registered trademark is goodwill with no legal fence around it. A buyer doing due diligence, or a franchise candidate about to sign, wants to know the name they're taking on is genuinely transferable. Our guide on licensing your concept out goes deeper on this: you can't license a trademark you never registered.
Run your own trademark protection numbers
Run your own trademark protection numbers
Enter how many countries you want covered, how many classes you need and the scale of your business. The calculator shows the recommended filing route, the 10-year cost, and how that compares with a forced rebrand.
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An indicative calculation from your own inputs — not a quote and not legal advice. National fees are illustrative; check current fees with EUIPO or your national trademark office.
Your action plan for the coming month
You don't need to memorise this article — you need it the moment you pick a name or open a second location. Three steps, a quarter of an hour each:
Today, for free:
- Look your own name up in the EUIPO trademark register — check whether someone else has already registered your name, or something very close to it
- Note how many countries you trade in now, and how many you want to expand into over the coming years (number 2)
- Enter your own figures into the calculator above and note the recommended route and the 10-year cost
This week, when filing:
- Pick the number of classes you genuinely need — too few leaves part of your brand unprotected, too many costs money you didn't need to spend (number 2)
- Ask a trademark attorney to review your application before you file, especially if your name is even slightly close to an existing one
- Don't put filing off until "things are quieter" — the opposition window (number 3) only starts running on the day you file
After registration, ongoing:
- Set up an annual trademark watch service, or block 15 minutes each quarter to check the register yourself (number 6)
- Note the renewal date, 10 years out, somewhere you can't miss it (number 7)
- Keep the registration certificate with your other business documents — a buyer or franchise candidate will eventually ask for it
Conclusion: the cheapest insurance most businesses never buy
This article doesn't overstate the risk: most businesses that never register a trademark are never copied and never lose their name. But the numbers above show why that's not a good reason to take the risk — the cost of doing it is small, fixed, and only due once every 10 years; the cost of not doing it is unpredictable and can run into the tens of thousands of euros at exactly the moment your business can least afford it. Our guide on taking over a restaurant goes deeper into what a buyer checks before signing — a registered trademark is always on that list.
Once your trademark is registered and your business is growing, that's exactly the kind of structural overview HappyChef is built for: your bookings, your revenue and your occupancy in one screen, so an investment like this one is never separated from how your business is actually doing. See what it costs — a one-time purchase, no commission per cover.