brand protection

Protecting your Brand
One of the main legal ways of protecting a brand is by trade mark registration. But not everything you might think of using as a brand is registrable as a trade mark.
The requirements of the current Trade Marks Act 1953 mean that in the right circumstances the shapes of packaging, colours, sounds even smells as well as the more conventional words and logos may be registered as trade marks. This amounts to recognition by the legal system of something you probably knew already - that all of these things can function as brands. But the crucial thing to remember is, the more unusual, the more - in the jargon - distinctive your brand is, the easier it is to legally protect.
But at this point my next question is, why register? What is registration? How does that protect your branding efforts?
Registering a trade...