Trademarks: The most important detail people overlook

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There's an unspoken issue all entrepreneurs face when starting a business. Not knowing where to start! Once you have decided on a business concept, you usually follow up by narrowing down options of what could be your business name. What questions new developing entrepreneurs need to ask themselves are: How does one protect and/or own their business name? What are the overall costs? Are there any complications? How long is the overall process?

According to the USPTO (2020), "A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, and/or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. A service mark is a word, phrase, symbol, and/or design that identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than goods." A trademark protects the brands logo for both goods and services. It protects a brands identity from similar usage and brand confusion. The entire registration process takes approximately 1 year and includes several steps.

As a newly registered trademark owner myself, it makes a large difference being guided in direction along the way especially if you don't know where to start. Visit USPTO.gov to start. Outside of registering a federal trademark, some states may also require you to file within the state as well as a business entity with usual filings applying for limited liability corporations (LLC's) or corporations. Once a business name is decided, you must decided on the type of mark format you want to file for trademark protection over as there are three different types: a standard character mark, a stylized/design mark, or a sound mark.

When you think of a sound mark, think of the introduction music to the disney film pre-rolls, standard character marks are the business names in plain legible lettering without specialized styling or colors, stylized marks are designs, with or without color. Once you have decided, on one of the options above, you must search the trademark database system known as the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to see if the business name is currently taken and live possibly preventing usage of the decided mark or name. https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-getting-started/trademark-basics/searching-marks-uspto-database 

If your business name is available, then you must decide if you are filing for goods or services, and the class of items you would like to file for protection for. Such as registering to sell hair products classify under class 026. Each class registered for trademark protection comes with a $100 fee. If you are a US resident you are not required to file with an attorney, but foreign domiciles, must have an attorney file for them. From there, fill out the application online following the step by step guidelines and once you submit the application, you can monitor all correspondence and its recent updates directly on the USPTO website with your chosen login and trademark registration search number provided to you during the application process. Your business filing will be assigned a case manager that will push your application along through the next steps. From there you can either file for an extension period if you need additional time before your goods or services are used in commerce, which is valid for 6 months at a time, once your business is in use, you can file to notify and notice of allowance is given from there. 

You must file what is called a statement of use to notify the USPTO that your business named filed is officially in use with consumers via selected goods or services. You must provide photos of the mark in usage as studio photos are not acceptable. From there, you will reach the mandatory 30 day for objection step. In this step, roughly 6-9 months in, your trademark name will be published in the USPTO gazette in which business owners can challenge your filing if they are operating under your filed business name, and from there you would move onto court proceedings. If no oppositions are filed, then your trademark is approved temporarily, for an additional check within another office which takes roughly 1-2 more months, and after that you are mailed your registration certificate, the registration status is updated in a separate section of the website.

Your trademark is protected from others infringing on the name and/or selling goods or services as your brand.