I know this link is from the US, but it still has great information:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/trademarks/workflow/start.htmYou do not have to trademark a logo or name. I managed a company's trademarks and patents and will tell you what I know.
Basically a trademark is either TM (unregistered) or an R with a circle (registered)
Anyone can put a TM to a phrase or to a logo or to a name. What this does is tell the public that the words or images you use are used as a part of your identity assets. However, if you have to go to court to defend it, there is little protection, except in the case of you using it for 20 years and the other party just started using it, then the defendability is in your favor.
If you pay to have it registered and use the R with a circle around it, you have good legal grounds to defend it. I must note that some words cannot be trademarked (because they are commonly used words) and that the same words may be also registered by others but in a different class of products.
To get a proper trademark, you can go to your country's patent & trademark web site and see what they require to do so.
Some people hire a patent & trademark attorney to do it for them BECAUSE if you are serious about it, they make multiple replacementes in many databases to see if it is used or is close to something else. No one wants to buy a trademark then be sued to cease because it is so close to another.
As far as using your own name, I am not sure since there are many duplicate names in the world! lol....
I hope that is a useful overview. BTW, I am a marketing consultant and not an attorney so this information is from a marketing management perspective.
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