Filing a trademark registration before the U.S.P.T.O. without a legal representative is possible but opens you up for challenges along the road. Generally, most business owners (and innovators) appreciate resourcefulness, quick thinking and of course, quick action. When it comes to the U.S.P.T.O. filings, minor errors or skipping crucial steps of analyzing potential conflicts on an application can set you back. Fast filing does not equal fast review and granting of a trademar

First, accept that it is part of the day-to-day of trademark owners and that there are multiple ways at assessing, addressing and de-escalating a situation where someone else is using a trademark you own. Use on its own does not necessarily mean it is infringing, and there are times when setting brand guidelines with those that interact with your brand can anticipate and reduce the risks of infringing uses. Every case of third-party use of a trademark can be different, and le

You can and, sometimes, it might be a faster route. It of course depends on your expansion plans, popularity of your brand (in case it can be registered by someone else abroad) and budget. There are multiple systems in place to allow for international registrations, with some regions allowing for trademarks valid in a group of countries (i.e. European Union trademarks)

I´m not a scientist, but it can look like it for trademark laws. A specimen of use is a piece of evidence that the U.S.P.T.O. requests from trademark applicants to show evidence on how their mark is actually used in connection with the goods and/or services that they are seeking to protect. You can think of it as a piece of real-world evidence of your mark that the examining attorneys at the U.S.P.T.O. will dissect to confirm that the mark is being used in the way that is sho

You can, but the question you might want to ask is: should you? A business name can be completely different for the trademarks it owns or operates. Your business name could be Company “A,B, Sacramento LLC” and your trademarks be unrelated consumer-facing brands on their own. Think of where the value lies. Does your company name work as the source identifier for consumers of your products and services? Is that business name a legal entity that owns the products or services tha

A ® designation indicates that a federal trademark registration has been granted, and owners can choose to add the element to their marks, to let others know. The ™ symbol, on the contrary, merely indicates that there is a process in progress to seek registration of that trademark or that the symbol it is represented with is intended to be a trademark. The main difference? You should not use the ® symbol without an actual registration. That is, after a trademark application h

Most countries, including the United States, offer online databases of existing trademarks. They offer visual, keyword and exact word searches. While an exact search for a particular word that you want to use as a trademark may not indicate the existence of conflicting marks, it is possible that you might miss an existing registered mark that is not spelled the same way but sounds very similar to your registered mark. That is where a trademark clearance search becomes usefu

Do you want to use your mark in commerce (i.e. sell or offer your products or services) without fear that someone else will block you from using it? Then registration is worth considering. The United States operates on a system known as first to use, which means that the first person to use a trademark will be given the priority. Filing can be done on an intent to use basis, if you have not yet started using it but plan to. Registering a trademark can seem like an extra fina

A trademark that can differentiate your goods and/or services in a unique and distinctive way is considered strong. On the contrary, trademarks that have a limited ability at uniquely identifying the source of goods (i.e. because they are descriptive or suggestive – alluding to the product without describing it directly) are considered weaker. The U.S.P.T.O. uses the following spectrum classification to classify trademarks from strongest to weakest: Fanciful, Arbitrary, Sug

A word mark (or standard character mark) protects a trademark as it shows written on an application, the wording itself, no matter how it's styled. This means that it can be then shown on as many different graphic representations as their owner sees fit. Let's say that you have a trademark name and you want to change the font and name every month to keep up with trends or aesthetics of the calendar year. A word mark allows you to. The trademark protects the words, not the lo

A trademark is a source identifier, which is a nice way of saying that it is a symbol, word, sound, color or other element capable of signaling where a product or service comes from. That´s the key thing trademarks: they work to indicate consumers where a product or service originates from, not to simply act as a name. Here´s an example. You might see a three-stripe tee shirt and immediate associate it with or think it was produced by ADIDAS. That´s how trademarks work. Ima