When one starts a business, apart from planning for all financial, manufacturing and personnel considerations, the brand of the product or the service also plays a critical part. Customers have to identify with the brand to ensure success of the enterprise. Brands when legally protected by registration are called trademarks. To effectively monetize your product or service, the trademark has to be unique, easily recallable by the customer and must give you the exclusive use of the brand.
Designing the appearance of the trademark is not sufficient. You need to establish your ownership of the trademark so that you can be protected from people who may want to exploit its popularity by appropriating the trademark for their use. By registering your trademark, you ensure that you are legally protected for ownership of the brand and can take legal steps to prevent infringement of your rights.
Registration of trademarks is done at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or the USPTO. The USPTO is responsible for implementing all laws pertaining to Intellectual Property rights and extending protection under such laws to all those who register their trademarks, copyrights for works of art and patents for engineering discoveries.
The registration of a trademark begins with the application in a standard form, available with the USPTO, being made with the office. Once the application is received by the USPTO, it is reviewed to ensure that all necessary minimum requirements have been met. If they have not, all the documents submitted including the application and the fee would be returned. If all the requirements are met, a serial number is assigned to it and a formal receipt is sent about two months after the submission.
This is just the beginning and you cannot yet start using the trademark. The next step in the process is to get the attorney assigned by the PTO to examine the trademark. The attorney will conduct a search in the database for registered trademarks to eliminate the possibility of a similar trademark already being registered. If such is the case, the application is likely to be rejected. With so many trademarks having been registered, it is an arduous and time-consuming process.
To prevent the possibility of rejection, you should ensure that the trademark sought to be registered by you bears no resemblance to any already registered. You can hire a professional to conduct such a search or do it yourself though it is advisable that you hire a professional lawyer well experienced in this work to save on time. Such a lawyer will also assume all responsibilities towards the legalities in the registration process.
Usually, there are two aspects to a trademark, the word/s and the symbol/s. In case the symbol has been rejected by the PTO through a letter or a phone call, they will also give you the reasons for the rejection. You should study the objections and take such steps as necessary to satisfy the PTO by getting it reexamined by the lawyer. Perhaps redesigning the symbol will be sufficient.
Registering a trademark is a lengthy and time-consuming process. If you want to proceed at a higher speed, it is best that you hire a trademark lawyer who will take care of all documentation and other requirements. They will also conduct a search prior to submission to ensure that the design chosen will pass muster at the PTO.
Patents and Trademarks
When people think of starting their own business, what they usually think first is the logo or the trademark of their company. They will also think about the capital and will make the necessary business plans to present with the bank when taking out a loan.
You have to consider that it is important for a business to have a trademark symbol in order for consumers to identify their products. If you want to start your own business, you may want to think about the design of your trademark symbol or logo. You have to consider the fact that it should be unique and should be easily remembered by consumers.
However, just thinking about and designing your trademark and applying it in your products and as business logo is not enough. You have to consider the fact that registering your trademark is also important. By registering your business trademark, your company will have exclusive rights for the use of the trademark. By having that right, it will make it illegal for other companies to copy your trademark symbol to be placed in their products. You have to consider that in order to protect your products better, you have to register your trademark in order for it to become illegal to reproduce without the authorization of your company.
First of all, trademark registration is done in the United States Patent and Trademark Office or the PTO. The Patent and Trademark Office is responsible for registering trademark and is also responsible for granting exclusive rights for the company to use their trademark symbol. The Patent and Trademark Office is also responsible on patenting new inventions and copyrighting works of art and engineering designs. You have to realize that the Patent and Trademark Office is responsible and is actively implementing the intellectual property law.
The first step in trademark registration application is by filing for it with the Patent and Trademark Office. Once your application is received by the Patent and Trademark Office, it will review your application and determine if it meets all the minimum requirements set by them. If not, all the documents you mailed, including your application and the fee will be returned to you. However, if the filing meets the minimum requirements and is approved by the Patent and Trademark Office, they will assign a serial number on it and sends you a receipt after about two months after filing it.
However, you have to consider that this is not the end of the process and you cannot use the trademark symbol yet. The next step in the registration process is the examination of the trademark symbol made by the Patent and Trademark Office's attorney. The attorney will search the database for registered trademarks and determines if the trademark symbol you are trying to register will be rejected or will be approved. Usually, the common grounds for rejection is that the trademark being examined bears similarities to trademarks already approved. You have to consider that it will be lengthy process considering all the trademark symbols existing today.
This is why you should make sure that your trademark will bear no similarities or resemblance to existing trademarks that is already registered. You can do this by hiring your own patent and trademark lawyer or by searching for it yourself. However, it is recommended that you should hire a lawyer because it can prove to be time consuming when you look for it yourself. The trademark lawyer you hire will be knowledgeable and will be responsible in all the different legalities concerning your trademark.
If your trademark symbol has been rejected, the Patent and Trademark Office will send you a letter and call you by phone and inform you about the grounds for rejection. You should overcome all the objections and have it reexamined by the lawyer again. You can do this by redesigning your trademark symbol.
These are the things you need to know when registering your trademark symbol. As you can see, it will take quite a while before you can actually legally use your trademark. If you want the process to go faster, you can consider hiring a trademark lawyer where they will prepare all the necessary documents and requirements. They will also do an examination of your trademark symbol and determine if you need to redesign your trademark or not.
Patents and Trademarks
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