What the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games Can Teach Australian Brands About Trade Mark Strategy
The Commonwealth Games have just wrapped up in Glasgow, and behind the medals and the ceremonies, there's a quieter story about trade marks — one that's particularly relevant for Australian businesses.
Let's break it down.
A Games Built on a Tight Budget and an Even Tighter Timeline
Glasgow only became host after Victoria withdrew from staging the 2026 Games in 2023, citing spiralling costs. That left organisers with a fraction of the usual lead time to pull the event together — and it shows in how they've approached brand protection.
The Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland filed its first trade mark application for GLASGOW 2026 back in April 2024, followed by the logo and the TEAM SCOTLAND slogan later that year. But unlike Birmingham 2022 — which filed trade marks across the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, the United States, Turkey and China — Glasgow's protection has been limited to the UK alone.
Why This Matters Even If You're Not Running a Global Sporting Event
It's easy to read this as a story about the Commonwealth Games. It's really a story about trade-off decisions that every growing business eventually has to make.
Budget and timeline pressure force hard choices about where to file. Glasgow's organisers clearly decided that UK protection was the priority, and international filing simply wasn't affordable given the compressed schedule. Australian businesses expanding overseas face the same calculation — and get it wrong in both directions, either overspending on markets they'll never enter or under-protecting markets where a competitor is already circling.
A trade mark registered only at home offers no protection abroad. If your brand becomes commercially valuable in international markets you haven't filed in, you may find someone else has already registered — and is using — your name or logo there.
Filing early secures your place in the queue. Glasgow's organisers filed the word mark more than two years out from the opening ceremony. Whatever your business, waiting until a launch is imminent to think about trade mark protection is almost always too late.
The Practical Takeaway for Australian Businesses
If you're planning to take a brand into new markets — whether that's Southeast Asia, the UK, or anywhere else — the smart approach is a staged filing strategy that matches your actual expansion plans, not a "file everywhere" approach that burns budget on markets you may never enter, and not a "file nowhere" approach that leaves your brand exposed the moment you do enter.
How Regional IP Can Help
At Regional IP, we help Australian businesses build trade mark strategies that make commercial sense — protecting the markets that matter to your growth plans without wasting budget on markets that don't.
Get in touch with Regional IP today to talk through your brand's expansion plans and the trade mark filing strategy that fits them.