Just like a strong password protects personally identifiable information from being stolen, federally registering your trademark or service mark bolsters your company’s brand recognition and brand protection strategies in the marketplace.
As the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) points out, there are numerous advantages to registering a trademark on the Principal Register. These include:
- Notifies the public of your claim of ownership of the mark, and allows you to use the ® symbol in connection with the mark.
- Creates a presumption that the mark is inherently distinctive and that you are the owner.
- Provides exclusive rights to use the mark in connection with your products or services nationwide.
- Makes it easier to go to e-commerce websites like Amazon, eBay and Etsy for assistance in disabling infringing listings
- Makes it easier to successfully gain control of domains that infringe your mark through Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) arbitration or through a federal anti-cybersquatting lawsuit.
A trademark (products/goods), service marks (services) and trade dress (e.g. product packaging or certain website features). Less common are sounds or smells that consumers associate with a particular good or product. A trademark attorney, such as Paul Ticen, is the best resource for ensuring your trademark registration and trade dress registration is properly researched and completed to offer you the ultimate brand protection.
Pre-Application Evaluation
To protect your overall brand recognition and brand loyalty strategy, it’s important to cover all the bases before moving forward with the trademark registration process, service mark registration process and trade dress registration process.
The evaluation stage is the best time to:
- Determine the strength of your trademark, service mark, or trade dress. Both in terms of the likelihood of achieving federal registration on the Principal Register and enforcing your rights in court.
- Research and identify any potentially conflicting trademarks, both registered and unregistered.
- Address and resolve issues that could impact the application of your brand mark during the registration process and enforcement.
- Decide whether to proceed with the trademark process based on the likelihood of overcoming potential problems.
The Application Stage
This stage includes preparing and prosecuting your trademark registration application, trade dress registration application, or service mark registration application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The services of a trademark lawyer are essential at this point because there are many traps for the unsuspecting, and any missteps could compromise the trademark process itself, impair future legal positions down the road and lead to eventual cancellation of the registration.
For example, not accurately or completely describing the goods and/or services for which the mark will be used to create brand recognition and brand loyalty could jeopardize long-term brand protection and allow a competitor to successfully void your registered mark.
Post-Application Stage
Unfortunately, automatic approval of your trademark registration application, trade dress registration application, or service mark registration application is not guaranteed. A trademark examiner with the United States Patent and Trademark Office must review your application and can either grant, seek additional information or clarification, or refuse your application.
However, because there are many gray areas in trademark law, the examiner’s ruling is subjective. During the post-application stage, your trademark attorney will:
- Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s position.
- Discuss with you whether it makes good economic sense to persuade the USPTO to reverse its decision.
- Prepare substantive responses in an attempt to reverse the USPTO’s decision.
The Legal Assistance You Need
When it comes to the trademark registration process, service mark registration process and trade dress registration process, Attorney Paul Ticen’s depth of knowledge and experience will give you peace of mind. He assists individuals and businesses throughout the entire process of registering a trademark.
With Paul Ticen as your trademark lawyer, you can rest assured your trademark registration, trade dress registration, or service mark registration is handled in the most cost-effective and time efficient manner.
He is committed to:
- Working with clients as a strategic partner to develop the best practices to establish brand awareness and protection possible.
- Communicating with clients to provide him, her or it with the necessary information needed to make a well-informed decision on whether to incur the costs of proceeding with the trademark application process or go back to the drawing board to strengthen the brand.
- Representing clients with trademark appeals, trademark opposition proceedings, trademark cancellation proceedings and federal court trademark infringement and unfair competition litigation.
Hiring a trademark attorney like Paul Ticen can mitigate against the trademark registration, trade dress registration, or service mark registration becoming compromised or legal positions becoming impaired, making it difficult to enforce brand protection goals down the road.
Attorney Paul Ticen also handles ancillary/post-registration issues, such as preparing and recording assignments when trademark ownership is transferred, and preparing and filing trademark maintenance documents, including the Declaration of Continued Use.
Whatever your trademark, service mark, or trade dress needs may be, contact Attorney Paul Ticen for expert legal advice and representation. He’ll make sure your brand gets the trademark, service mark, or trade dress registration it deserves.