Does your slogan have to be trade marked for it to be protected?

Activewear brand Sweaty Betty has recently become subject to controversary due to its alleged ‘theft’ of slogans from smaller brands. Nixi Body, a period underwear company, claims that the company copied its advertising slogans. This is the latest allegation after personal trainer Georgina Cox revealed Sweaty Betty had offered her a settlement over a disputed slogan.

For years, Nixi Body advertised its leak-proof period underwear with the lines “Keeping you moving through menstruation, motherhood and menopause” and “No leaks. No ifs. Just butts.”. On the advertisement for its femtech range of leak-resistant and maternity leggings, Sweaty Betty used the tagline “Keeping you moving through menstruation, maternity and menopause”. It then changed the tagline to read “Menstruation. Maternity. Menopause. Together we’re raising the bar for every woman, for any life stage.” Earlier this year, Sweaty Betty then ran a campaign using the slogan “No ifs. Just butt.”

In 2020, Ms Cox went viral for the use of the phrase “Wear The Damn Shorts”. She had been approached by Sweaty Betty in 2023 and 2024 for consent to use the phrase in its advertising campaigns and received payment on both occasions. However, in 2025, Ms Cox claims that Sweaty Betty used this phrase without crediting her in its latest campaigns. She has since been offered her a settlement of £4,000 over a disputed slogan if she agreed not to further challenge the firm’s use of it, and agreed to keep the deal confidential.

Does the law protect taglines?

The law doesn’t allow rights to be granted in descriptive phrases or taglines that consumers see purely as marketing “fluff”; therefore, advertising slogans can be difficult to protect as trade marks. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a free for all. Registration can be granted where a tagline is highly unusual or a user provides evidence to show that consumers link a slogan with them alone.

Sweaty Betty refers to multiple parties having used the phrases in question, or variations of them, to justify its decision to adopt them. Whether the landscape is such that no one party could actually claim exclusive rights in these taglines, it seems that both Nixi Body and Georgina Cox feel they had built some brand equity in them through longstanding use and promotion.

Even if the threshold to claim legal rights isn’t reached, where there is a perception that someone has a valid claim to ownership over a phrase, the reputational damage caused by a perceived “theft” can be extremely damaging, especially off the back of multiple claims of appropriation.

In the digital age, it is sensible to carry out both register and in-use checks on taglines before adoption and proceed with caution for anything other than the purely descriptive.

If you have questions or concerns about the protection of your slogan, or any other brand protection query, please contact Patricia Collis.