Legal word of the week- [Registration] Series by Alan M L Jones.

REGISTRATION

1 What do you have to register?

What DON'T you have to register?!

You have to register:

births, marriages and deaths,

many things to do with companies,

many things to do with real property,

certain types of intellectual property (patents, trade and service marks and registered designs but not copyright), and

ships, aircraft, motor vehicles etc

2 The starting points

The Register - a book (or, now, a computer)

The Registrar - a person

The Registry or Registration Office - a place where the register is kept and the registrar works

3 To keep - a number of different meanings

If something is kept somewhere, that's where it lives, where it's located e.g. the crown jewels are kept at the Tower of London

If you keep a record of something, you write down or remember it e.g. a time-recording system will keep a record of how much time a lawyer spends on a matter

The Registrar is responsible for keeping the Register up to date e.g. he has to make all the necessary entries in it

4 Some sample language to do with registration

You file Form 123 at or with Companies House / the Companies Registration Office or with the Registrar of Companies

You register a mortgage of real property at or with the Land Registry

So, you can register something

AT or WITH a place

but only WITH a person

To be precise, the legal requirement is to file something or present something for registration. Only the Registry can register something and it will do so if what is filed / presented meets / complies with the requirements for registration

5 Done on a national or local level?

In many jurisdictions, company registration is done locally by, for example, the local Court, Chamber of Commerce or Legal Affairs Bureau

In the UK, it is done on a national level. We only have three Companies Registration Offices, also called "Companies House"- one for England and Wales, one for Scotland and one for Northern Ireland

About Alan M L Jones

Qualified as a solicitor more than 35 years ago and has practised for many years mostly in London but also further afield in Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Tokyo. Alan has been both a lawyer and a communication / language teacher for years and used his experience to create the ACE Legal English online courses for non-native speaker lawyers. The courses are very engaging and relevant and are the first of their kind.