USPTO Trademark Filing in Just $49
Register Your Trademark with USPTO Today & Get Serial No. in 24 Hours
If you own a business, having a trademarked name can be very beneficial. A trademark allows you to prevent others from using your brand name without permission. This can help protect your business from competition and make it easier for customers to identify your products or services.
To protect your brand name or logo, one of the best steps is to trademark it. A federally registered trademark entitles a business to exclusive rights over its use in connection with the goods or services that it provides. For example, Apple has a federally registered trademark on its Apple logo and name.
In order to obtain a federal registration for your trademark, you must fill out an application form and submit it along with specimens—for example, photos of how you currently use your mark on products—to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).
If you plan on using both text and images in your marketing materials, then consider registering both as trademarks so that you have full protection against any potential infringement by another company trying to use similar branding elements in their ads or marketing. Companies can advertise their products when selling competing products or services under similar brands names within the same geographic region where yours is already established in consumers’ minds (e..g., “Apple” computers versus Dell Computer Corp’s “Dell” line of PCs).
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office will review your application, as well as any specimens that you submit with it, to ensure that they meet all of the legal requirements for a trademark registration. If your application is approved by the USPTO, then it will be published in the Official Gazette (the official publication of federal government information) for opposition from third parties who may have an interest in opposing your trademark registration (e..g., if someone else has already registered their own version of your mark).
A trademark registration serves notice of your claim of ownership, deters others from using your trademark without your consent, and creates a legal presumption of your ownership. You can use the trademark symbol (TM) or registered trademark symbol (®) with any word or phrase that defines the source of goods or services to indicate that you own the mark and are claiming exclusive rights to it. You can sue for damages if someone else uses your registered mark without permission.
A trademark is any word, phrase, symbol, design or combination thereof. For example, the words “Kodak” and “Mercedes-Benz” are trademarks that identify particular products. So are the design of the Coca-Cola bottle and the Nike swoosh symbol.
A trademark can be used to identify a product or service. For example:
You can only trademark a name if it’s distinctive and not descriptive. For example, you can’t trademark the word “Easy” for a new laundry detergent because it’s descriptive of how the detergent works. But if you named your detergent “Eazy,” you could probably trademark it.
A trademark search is an examination of existing trademarks to ensure that your proposed mark is available for registration as a federal or state trademark. To complete this step in the process, you have to do some research into other trademarks that might conflict with yours.
For example, if there are other companies using similar names, they could potentially sue you over your use of those names (if they’re able to prove that consumers would be confused by both brands). This is why it’s important to do some due diligence before choosing a brand name—and even more so when registering one as an official trademark!
You can check to see if someone else is already using a name as a trademark by searching the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s online database.
To search by name or description, select “Basic Search.” The system will ask you to enter the word or phrase you want to search for and then click “Continue.” It will show all of the results that have been registered under that keyword or phrase, which may include variations on your idea. If there are no matches, nothing will come up when you click “Continue” in this screen—but keep reading!
If other people have already claimed your desired trademark name, then they’ll be listed here along with their contact information so that you can contact them about legal issues related to usage of this mark (if any). You may also want to review their registration details and make sure everything about their registration is correct before proceeding further down below this section of our guide!
If you have a good reason to believe that your trademark will be used by others, you should register it. It’s important to note that a registered trademark does not give you an automatic right to sue someone who uses your mark without permission or license. You must still prove that they made unauthorized use of your mark and that they’ve caused damages as a result.
Register Your Trademark & Get The Delivery of your USPTO Serial No. In 24 Hours
Register Your Trademark with USPTO Today & Get Serial No. in 24 Hours