Hundreds of new businesses are started every year. By implication this would mean that many new business names, brands and trademarks also are created every year. It is therefore not sufficient to draw up a good business plan, arrange for finance, personnel etc. You will also have to protect your equity in your trademark and business name by registering them with the appropriate authority.
Trademarks distinguish competing products from each other. A trademark can be a word, symbol or a logo or a combination of all. Since your product will have to compete with several others, it is essential that the differentiation take place based on the strength of your trademark.
Since copying some other trademark is illegal, you should obviously develop your own trademark. It should be unique and not resemble any other trademark in the same category of products or service. To protect your ownership of the trademark, it is essential that you register it too. This will legally prevent others from copying or infringing on your trademarks.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office or USPTO is the place where thousands of trademarks are registered. It is therefore quite difficult to come up with a trademark completely unique and different from some other registered trademark. This makes it very likely that whatever you come up with may be rejected for being similar to some other trademark. It is therefore necessary to find out beforehand, if something similar to what you propose has already been registered. This can be done by carrying out diligent searches prior to even applying for registration of your own trademark.
Registering a trademark is a time consuming and expensive exercise. Any rejection would cause loss of valuable time as well as expenses incurred and you will have to start all over again with a redesign. To avoid such a development, it is advisable to hire a Patent and Trademark lawyer. He would know how to carry out a search to either find similar trademarks already registered or to give a green signal to go ahead with the registration formalities.
Patents and Trademarks lawyers can be very expensive. The expenses however will be justified when you consider that everything will move systematically, legally and quickly. This would not be the case if you were to do it on your own.
The lawyer chosen can also represent you in defending or revising or resubmitting your trademark if the USPTO refuses to register the proposed trademark. It is therefore essential that you hire a capable and experienced professional. Hiring someone from a referral service may not be such a good idea as your specific requirements may not be known to the service and they are likely to refer someone readily available at that particular point of time.
By conducting a search operation before submitting the application and using the services of a capable trademark lawyer will ensure that your trademark will get registration in the least possible timeframe. You can start exploiting the trademark that much sooner.
Patents and Trademarks