How Do I Register a Trademark

 A Step by St­­ep Guide to Trademarks

Trademark registration would be the first priority task businesspeople, producers, and business companies will have to do when safeguarding their business name, product, and goods. New or existing business, trademark registration will never leave anyone in the dark from utilizing your own mark, image, or sign. On this master guidebook, we will guide you step by step hand in hand on everything that you want to know about trademark registration from trademark basics to step-by-step tutorial on trademark registration.

What is a Trademark?

Trademark is a distinctive name, word, symbol, or phrase that identifies and names your business or service. Trademark is intellectual property and even safeguards the business name legally. Trademarks avoid ease of identification with the customers where other companies do not utilize the similar marks so that they will not confuse the customers.

Trademarks can be:

• Names: Business name, company name, slogans
• Logos: Never spoken word but consider your business
• Designs: Shape or form of your business
• Sounds: Sound of your business or company (NBC chime would be a great example)
• Colors: Most often your cases or specific colors meaning and recognizable to your business (example would be Tiffany blue

Now that you have registered your mark, you are free to yourself use your mark and do not allow other individuals to use the same or identical marks without your consent. Trademarks are a form of advertising property and are used to place you on the market.

Why Should You Register a Trademark?

All in your favor. Even assuming, if at all, that you are already acquiring rights automatically in your trademark by use, it gives a partial degree of additional protection in law, i.e.

1. Legal Protection: Your registration gives rebuttable presumption of ownership and exclusive right to the mark as notice of non-infringement unto you.
2. Public Notice: Your mark becomes public notice in public eye on public record when you register, notice to general public that your mark is protectible.
3. Right of Exclusivity: You have right of exclusivity where your mark is used on your goods or services as to protection of your registered mark.
4. Ability to Sue for Infringement: Your right to sue for infringement in federal court of registered trademark.
5. Enhanced Brand Value: Registered trademark is an addition of value to your company’s brand, and it is a value gainful to your company.
6. International Protection: Abroad protection of your mark can be ensured when business operations are constantly being carried out in foreign countries of the world.
7. Use of the ® Symbol: You may add symbol ® suffix to your name to specify protection of your mark in law upon registration.

Step-by-Step Guide to Registering a Trademark

Step 1: Determine if Your Trademark is Eligible for Registration

Decide whether you will or won’t register your trademark. For that, you must consider: Prior to registering your trademark, put your trademark in good standing so that it will be defendable. Trademarks must be distinctive, i.e., capable of distinguishing and identifying your goods or services from those of another individual. There are guidelines so that:

• Distinctiveness: Trademarks are placed on a continuum of how distinctive they are in five categories:
• Fanciful: Marks totally made up (e.g., “Kodak”)
• Arbitrary: Descriptive generic marks (e.g., “Apple,” in the computer context)
• Suggestive: Marks that express some facet of the product personality (e.g., “Netflix,” in the video on demand context).
• Descriptive: Marks used to identify some attribute or some facet of the product (e.g., “Creamy” in the yoghurt context). Descriptive marks will use secondary meaning to make them enforceable.
• Generic: Definitions of the goods or services themselves and by nature never registrable (e.g., “Milk”). The mark “Milk” is a generic term which has always been non-registerable.
• No Infringing Trademarks: Your mark is not necessarily even required to be confusingly similar or fraudulently similar with the registered mark. They don’t need to have any notion whether someone else might use the same mark on the same trade.
• Not Generic and Not Descriptive: Your mark is not generic nor descriptive if it needs to be registered.

Step 2: Conduct a Trademark Search

And so then once you have your mark prepared that you will be submitting, the second would be conducting trademark searches so that you are reasonably certain that your chosen trademark is distinctive. The reason you would do this is because if your mark is close to some other mark which is close and already in existence, your application will be rejected.

You can subsequently use these pre-existing resources to look for registered marks in the USPTO database or even trademark registries. It will ascertain whether your company is already bearing someone else’s mark under your company or not.

Step 3: Prepare Your Trademark Application

Then register your trademark so that it will be yours alone. Next, the second one is to prepare your application. Application is filed online through the USPTO’s Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) or whatever office equivalent would be your trademark office.

Major information of a trademark application is the following:

1. Owner Information: Full information of the owner (business house or individual) of the trademark.
2. Filing Trademark: Claim a bare recitation of the mark, i.e., word, mark, or logo.
3. Description of Goods/Services: Name the goods or services upon or in which the mark will be employed. You should describe them within the USPTO or administration agency system of classes of marks.
4. Bases of Filing: You have to indicate in which bases you agree to file your trademark

• Use in Commerce: You would need to file proof of use (i.e., on signs or ads), if you would be using the mark in commerce.
• Intent to Use: If you would not be using the mark currently but would use the mark in the future, you could use intent to use. You would need to file a Statement of Use later in the future.

5. Signature: Your application is signed under oath by the owner of the trademark stating facts in your application to be true.

Step 4: Submit Your Application

When you submit your application, you submit online to the office that you are submitting to. When submitting with the US, you submit to the USPTO. You submit differently depending on what type of class of application that you are submitting and depending on how many classes of goods and/or services you are registering. You submit $250 and $350 per class of services/goods.

Step 5: Examination of Your Application

Your application to register a mark is reviewed by an USPTO or nation examining attorney upon your filing. He will try to decide whether the mark is qualifying, objectionable to registered marks, and distinctive.

If your defaulting application attorney detects fault in your application, he will notify you by issuing notice in the form of an Office Action wherein fault has to be deleted by you. You can respond to action and provide evidence or clarification on your part.

Step 6: Publication in the Official Gazette

When your application has survived the examining attorney test, it is published in the Official Gazette, the USPTO weekly newspaper. It will be vulnerable to opposition on confusing similarity or infringement grounds.

Apart from 30-day opposition on date of publication, your mark is yours.

Step 7: Issuance of Your Trademark Registration

When your oppositions are waived (opposition not filed), your trademark is registered. You receive a certificate of registration, and your trademark and your sole right to use your trademark are protected.

Step 8: Maintaining Your Trademark

Renews, registrations, and deadlines later must be taken into account. US trademarks must be renewed on every 10-year cycle and two maintenance filings filed so the trademark can be bought for maintenance.

Conclusion

Trademark registration is just half of your protection for your mark, product, or service. It will safeguard your intellectual property, and you can sue for your mark theft. It is not overnight, but the reason that reaches here may help you obtain trademark registration and protection as well.

 FAQs

1.) How much does it cost to register a trademark?

Fee for fee submission will vary based on classes you are teaching and in which class, US being example case. For goods or services class, it would be $250-$350.

2.) For how long to become a trademark?

Trademark filing process takes 8-12 months but in other example case depending on the complexity and issues involved at the moment in the submission.”.

3.) Do I have to employ a trademark lawyer to register my trademark?

Although you will never need to utilize the attorney service, it is worth the price when you are not present in person. Your lawyer will draft the application in correct form and prevent costly mistakes.

4.) Can I trademark a slogan?

You can register a slogan as a trademark wherever it is registrable and distinctive. Your slogan must be creative and never and never ever turn into generic names of goods and services.

5.) My trademark is being infringed, what can I do?

You can sue for restraint where the trademark is prima facie likely to be infringed. You can sue, send a cease and desist letter, or approach the respective office of trademarks.