How to register a trademark for a Digital Design Agency
Introduction
If you own or operate a business, it’s important to protect your brand. Branding is an essential part of any company, and that includes online businesses. In today’s digital age, your agency can use its brand name or logo in many different types of media: on its website, social media platforms, advertising materials and more. These assets can be used by other companies without your consent unless they are trademarked—a legal process that gives you exclusive rights over them.
What is a Trademark?
Trademarks are a word, phrase or design that identifies the source of goods or services. In other words, they’re brands. You use trademarks to indicate that your product or service came from you and not someone else. Trademark protection is granted to the owner of the mark.
Trademarks can be registered with a national trademark office (like the United States Patent & Trademark Office) or with a state or local government office (depending on where you do business).
How Do I Register an Agency Trademark?
You can register your trademark with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). A common mistake is that people think they have to file a federal application every time they use their mark in commerce. In reality, if you have been using your business name as a trademark for at least six months before attempting to register it, you do not need to submit anything with the USPTO prior to filing your federal application — just include all relevant info when submitting your application and clearly explain why this date was chosen so far back in time!
What Type of Trademark Should I Register?
You can register a trademark for your agency’s name, logo, and domain name. You can also register a trademark for your agency’s slogan, tagline, and brand colours. In addition, you can register trademarks for products and services that you offer to clients as part of your digital design business (for example app development).
Digital Design Agency Name and Logo
When you register your Digital Design Agency, one of the first things you’ll have to do is pick a name and logo. Your name should be simple and easy to remember, but still unique enough that no one else has used it.
Use a professional name
To start off with, avoid names that are too long or confusingly similar to another company’s trademarked brand name. You want something simple and memorable so your clients will know exactly who they’re dealing with when they see your business card or website address on Google search results pages.
Domain Name Registration
The next step is to register your domain name. A domain name is the website address. It’s similar to an address for a physical building: if you want people to be able to find it and visit it, you need a way for them to know where exactly this location exists.
Domain names can be registered through online registrars and come in two types: “generic” or “taken.” The latter option will cost more because of its popularity and scarcity value, but both options work equally well if they match your brand standards!
Other Branding Elements You May Wish to Trademark
In addition to your logo, you may also want to register your business name and any other branding elements that are unique to your brand. These could include:
- Business cards
- Stationery
- Social media accounts
- Website (URLs)
- Email address(es) (including @yourbrandname.com)
If you’re operating on a national scale, consider registering your phone number as well.
How to Know Whether or Not a Name Is Trademarked
You can search the USPTO database to see if a mark is already registered. Searching this database is free, but it will only tell you if a mark is registered by someone else in your state or country. You may also want to search the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS), which contains information about pending applications for trademarks.
Finally, you can search the USPTO records at the Library of Congress; these records show all marks ever registered with them since 1870 and allow you to search for marks based on their classification codes (for example: “DOING BUSINESS AS” or “DESIGN”). Another option is to hire an attorney who specializes in trademark law and has access to more extensive databases than those available online.
Besides searching these resources yourself, there are other ways that we recommend checking whether or not your desired name has been trademarked—and one of them involves hiring an attorney who specializes in this field!
What If the Name is Available, but Similar Names are Trademarked?
If the name you want to register is available, but similar names are trademarked, that can actually work to your advantage. In many cases, having a similar name will make it easier for you to market yourself and build up recognition in the marketplace. If you go into business with a partner who has already established their brand name or identity – e.g., they have been selling under their own name for 10 years – then it may be helpful if there are no other businesses out there using that same name.
It’s also possible that someone else has registered their mark first and taken over the search results when people look up your product or service online. That’s why it’s important to do thorough trademark searches before investing time and money into choosing a brand name; this way you can avoid spending money on trademarks which may conflict with existing marks (and save yourself from legal fees).
To protect your agency brand, you’ll want to register one or more agency trademarks.
You need to protect your agency brand. You’ve invested a lot of time and effort into building up your business, and you want to make sure it doesn’t go away just because someone else uses the same company name or slogan. Registering a trademark is the best way to protect your business against infringement by other companies who might try to use something similar in their own branding efforts.
However, this doesn’t mean that you have to register every aspect of your agency’s brand as trademarks—in fact, doing so would be quite costly. It’s best for small businesses like yours (with a budget) if only certain aspects of the business’ identity are registered as trademarks for protection purposes.
Conclusion
If you are a digital design agency, it’s important to protect your brand. Trademarking your company name, logo and domain name will help prevent others from stealing your work and profiting off of it.
