How to Register a Trademark for a Company Name?

''

Published: Feb 8, 2021

As soon as you get your business off the ground, you want improvements. Nothing can ever be good enough, and businesspeople are often perfectionists. Right at the start, you want to go out and trademark your company name.  That will protect you from your competitors because it gives you the right to identify your own services and products and restrict others from doing it. If you do not do it, the consequences can be severe. Here is an example. 

Let us say that you have a great new winning product related to phone accessories. You create an ad for it online, and the sales skyrocket, but you do not have a trademark. That means that other people that saw your advertisement can steal your logo, slogan, and name and pretend to be you. Click on this link to read more.

They will decrease the price, and then that will completely ruin your brand. All those people who bought the items from you will become confused because now the copycat is selling them at a much lower price. 

This whole process could also get you in legal trouble since they can claim you stole it from them. That is a lot of problems that can be completely avoided if you trademark your company name right at the beginning. 

How do you do it?

There is a reason why the entire world thinks the United States is the best country in the world. It is because protocols work, and you have the freedom to do everything. When it comes to trademarks, the process is quite easy. 

First, you need to send an application to the USPTO, which stands for United States Patent Trademark Office. They handle all the legal issues that come from these kinds of processes. Now, you can go through this process alone, or you can find an attorney who will guide you. 

If you choose to do it on your own, you should know that there are tons of legal contracts to read, and if you miss a document, you might need to go through the entire application all over again. Professional trademark attorneys are used to this process, and they already have the know-how and the experience to guide you. 

This will make the entire process much quicker, which will save you a lot of time. Plus, you will know that all the info is completely accurate, and you will not have to do it again. You can go to brandlance.com for more info. However, before you start filling in the documents, sit down with your teammates and decide on the logo, who will be the owner, and the niche you want to be in. 

As soon as you have all those details, you are going to have to classify them. For starters, the logo falls into design marks that need to be protected, and slogans and names fall into the category of word marks. 

Best follow the business name trademark guide.

What does a trademark protect?

Getting trademarked basically means that other people could distinguish the source from where something originates. This means that you have all the rights that come with the registration of your own products and services, and other companies cannot do it. 

This all works for cyber law, privacy, the data you own, as well as intellectual properties. When you go through this process, you are telling your customers that your company is the only place where they can get true value. 

The logo makes sense since that is an indicator of quality as well as brand association. If you are a creative corporation, this is one of the best things that you can do since you have a lot of valuable intellectual properties. Every song or movie that gets played on a channel that is not your own will give you revenue.

Additionally, if you want to sell physical goods, the trademark is incredibly important if you want to get verified by Amazon or other retail platforms. The market is already full of copycats, and you need to be cautious when it comes to the things you create. 

The main thing that you need to remember is that when you get trademarked, you can legally claim the use of a design, word, or phrase. This is, of course, limited to your logo, slogan, and company name. Finally, these legal contracts last around a decade, but you can renew them continuously.

When should you do it?

Many small businesses think that they should wait until they grow a little before they register a trademark. That is the equivalent of doing something tomorrow. But that tomorrow never comes. You might be putting a lot of money into marketing, and then a few months later, you will see that some other company has completely ripped you off and stole all your rights. 

That is not a nice situation to be in. Plus, you always have to call a licensed attorney to go through the name because you can't use descriptive or generic names. This means that companies like 'Best Cakes' or 'Red Bumper Stickers' cannot be registered. 

The best thing to do is find a name that has made up or is a bit fancy because it almost always has nothing to do with the product itself. Think about it. The name Uber does not mean anything related to cars or getting from one place to another. 

If you use a name that has nothing to do with your niche, you will have a much easier time getting trademarked. Usually, this process takes around six months, but it can be extended up to a year, depending on the service or product. 

Are there different applications?

There are two different applications TEAS Plus and TEAS Standard. Both have their limitations and their benefits. TEAS stands for Trademark Electronic Application System, and it is up to your company to decide which one to pick.

After you file the needed documents, the first time you will hear back is one to three months later, when they finish the review. The cost is relatively low, so that is why it pays off to hire a lawyer right at the start, to avoid timewasting back and forth.