Introduction
The procedure of trademarking your company name might be complicated, but it is worthwhile if you want to safeguard your firm’s intellectual property. The following are the procedures you must take to file for a trademark on your company name:
Select a trademark.
Choosing the name to trademark is an important step in preserving your company’s identity. You’ll want a name that’s original and memorable, related to your business, not already trademarked by another firm or individual, and not too similar to another trademark.
Check to see whether your trademark is available.
Check to see whether your trademark is available. To do so, use the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s trademark database (USPTO). You may also do a USPTO trademark search for existing trademarks at the USPTO and elsewhere. Check to see whether your suggested name is already in use by another company or individual that has filed a trademark application for it.
Check to see if your company’s name may be used as a trademark in all industries. Consider if a term or phrase may be regarded generic in any one category if you want to utilise it in conjunction with many sorts of items. In general, generic phrases cannot be used as trademarks unless they have gained secondary meaning by extensive usage over time and have been associated with only one brand or product rather than all brands or goods in that category.
Check to see if your company’s name will be protected under federal and/or state law where you intend to do business; some areas, such as Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), American Samoa (AS), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), and the Marshall Islands, may not have state-level protection but will instead receive federal protection (RMI).
Online trademark registration is available.
Follow these procedures to apply for trademark online:
Visit the USPTO website.
Click on the “Trademarks” link in the page’s top navigation bar.
Search their search engine for your company name and click on it when you find it. It will send you to a website with further information about your company name and directions on how to file a trademark application for it. Don’t worry if you don’t see your company name yet; it will appear after someone else has applied for it or after 60 days if no one else has submitted an application during that time (whichever comes first).
Monitor the status of your application.
Once your trademark application is submitted, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) may take three to six months to complete it. You can monitor the status of your application during that period by visiting http://www.uspto.gov or calling 1-800-786-9199.
When your trademark is granted and published in the USPTO’s Official Gazette, the USPTO will notify you through email. Once this occurs, other firms are permitted to use identical trademarks or product names as long as they do not raise customer misunderstanding about who owns the mark in issue.
Respond to any USPTO Office Actions on your application.
This is to ensure that you are submitting an application for the proper mark, that there is no conflict with another company’s registered trademark, and that the mark is being used in commerce. Before they accept your application, the Office Action will also go into depth about what has to be done to address their concerns. Your application will be abandoned if you do not react within 6 months after receiving the Office Action.
Your application will be abandoned if you do not react within 6 months of receiving an Office Action from the USPTO.
The USPTO will send you a Notice of Publication.
The Notice of Publication is the first step in registering your trademark.
The USPTO publishes your application in their Official Gazette once you submit it. This implies that anybody may view the kind of trademarks that are now pending or have previously been registered with them.
The Notice of Publication informs others that you have applied for a trademark and allows them to oppose it if they fear there will be confusion between their goods and yours or if you are applying for a trademark that infringes on their rights (e.g., if someone owns the name “Amazon” and someone else tries to register “Amazon” as a trademark).
This also allows you to check what types of trademarks are currently filed or registered with the USPTO, allowing you to prevent any conflicts in your own application. You must show proof as part of the application procedure that: 1) the mark is not confusingly similar to existing registered marks; and 2) the use of the mark will not create consumer confusion.
Registering a trademark might be expensive, but it is well worth it to protect your company’s name and emblem!
US trademark registration can be costly. To register a trademark, you must spend $600 – $1,000 each class of products or services (for example, if you have a clothes line and a handbag line, you must pay for two classes of goods).
This might be a prohibitively expensive investment for new enterprises. However, while it may appear to be an unnecessary investment at first, trademarking your brand name is worthwhile in the long term. The name of your firm is valuable: Consider how much money you’ve spent on your brand identity and logo! If someone else was able to use your name without your permission, they may cause customer confusion and destroy your reputation, resulting in lost sales for you.
If at all possible, do not wait until after the launch of your business to register trademarks; while it may appear expensive at first glance due to the one-time fee plus renewal costs every 10 years or so (if applicable), doing so early on will save money on legal fees later on when someone attempts to steal from or copy off of what’s already been established by following through with filing these documents sooner rather than later.”
Conclusion
The cost of USPTOtrademark filing might be too expensive for a small firm. The benefit of protecting your name and mark, on the other hand, transcends any initial expenditure in legal labour or payments to the USPTO. If you run a conventional brick-and-mortar business, carefully selecting your USPTO alternatives may help you save money on advertising expenditures later on when customers are looking for where they can buy from us online!