Buying an old TV trademark

Possibly the most technical and legal thread I've ever posted...

A couple of years ago there seemed to be a trend of individuals registering the trademarks of long gone TV brands. The most obvious (and possibly the most successful) are Victor Lewis Smith's production vehicle Associated Rediffusion and Ian White's TV-am which admirably exists for nostalgia purposes and to preserve the brand.

I've also seen TVS Productions registered for an independent production company but that didn't come to anything.

So I was wondering, how does it work? I know trademarks have a limited lifetime and need renewal, but is it possible to just register it once expired and take on an old company's identity?

I wouldn't bother in any case, be modern and creative having something that's uniquely yours if you're looking for a brand to work for your production company.

I completely agree, but I'm curious how it works.

In Victor Lewis-Smith's case he found that the legal limited company name to Associated Reddifusion had expired years ago at companies house, so he could register his prod company with that name.

It is curious arrangement, because whenever you see any footage from an old A-R production it's always credited as Associated Reddifusion production, rather than the current library/distributer who now own the footage.

Normally they're credited as 'Archbuild' - who are the company who sell the Rediffusion archive

How does he use the adastral trademark then?

He bought it?

Yes that's my point, it wasn't the case of registering the limited company name which enabled him to use the trademark.

You can only register a trademark for a limited period of time. Once that's expired, and not renewed by the current holder, anyone can register it.

If Coca Cola forgot to renew their registration, anyone could take over the trademark. This is why you have companies dedicated to trademark protection.

But what if Coca-Cola still owned Coca Cola Ltd, and they just forgot to renew it?

Company names are nothing to do with trademarks.

However, as part of the trademark registration you have to demonstrate your use of the mark, which is obviously easier if you have a company with the same name. Others can also challenge a trademark registration, which I suspect would happen in that example pretty quickly.

So, using a more relevant example, if ITV forgot to renew the Yorkshire chevron and someone else registered it and set up Yorkshire TV Productions using it, could ITV object - or could that only occur if they were still using it?