Be Careful With Unregistered Trademarks
A federal law known as the Lanham Act is often used for a variety of unfair competition claims brought by competitors, including infringement of unregistered trademarks. (At the state law level, most states have some version of a Deceptive Trade Practices Act that also prohibits unfair competition.) You should never assume that a cursory search of exact matches in the USPTO or Secretary of State databases can provide the all-clear to proceed with a brand idea.
Losing Your Trademark Rights
How do you make sure the time and expense you just went through to get your trademark registered in the first place doesn’t go down the drain? What do you need to know to avoid losing your trademark rights?
How to Trademark Your Business Name in 5 Simple Steps from Start to Completion
When most people start a business, they tend to put off legal issues until other things have been dealt with. Business owners know that legal issues will require the services of a lawyer, which can be both expensive and intimidating. But the truth is that some legal issues regarding your new business should be dealt […]
What is Trademark Infringement?
Trademark infringement is the unauthorized use of a trademark on or in connection with goods and/or services in a manner that is likely to cause confusion, deception, or mistake about the source of the goods and/or services. But what does this mean for your small business? How can you avoid receiving a nasty cease and desist […]
Protecting Your Unregistered Trademarks
We’ve talked before about the importance of conducting a thorough trademark search before launching a brand name or logo or slogan. You might be surprised to learn about similar trademarks that are already in use. You might learn that your proposed trademark would be considered relatively weak. Even if trademark registration simply isn’t in the budget yet […]
What to Trademark First: Name or Logo?
When you are working hard to build a brand, it’s easy to say “just trademark everything…name, multiple logos, slogans.” And in a perfect world, you should trademark every aspect of your brand. But in the real world, trademark registrations are not cheap, especially on a start-up budget. And multiple trademark registrations won’t matter if you aren’t also […]
Transferring Ownership of Intellectual Property
Over the lifespan of a small business, you may find yourself needing to sell or transfer intellectual property rights. There are a variety of situations where this might come up: Even though intellectual property rights are intangible, they can still be sold or transferred much like any other business asset. This week, we look at how to […]
Trade Names, Fictitious Names, and DBAs
Building a successful business is hard work. You need a great product or service, a marketing plan for getting the word out, skills in sales to convert your product or service into actual money, a head for numbers and finance, and innumerable leadership skills to tie it all together. Today, let’s talk about the marketing/branding […]
Protecting Your Brand, Part 4 – Enforcing Your Trademark
In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the importance of conducting a trademark search. In Part 2, we explained this idea of the “likelihood of confusion” and what to look for in that trademark search. In Part 3, we discussed how to register your trademarks with the USPTO. But once your trademark is registered, it’s your job to protect […]
Protecting Your Brand, Part 3 – How to Register Your Trademarks
To recap, in Part 1 of this series, we discussed the importance of conducting a trademark search, and in Part 2, we explained this idea of the “likelihood of confusion” and what to look for in that trademark search. Assuming your trademarks aren’t confusingly similar with that of another company offering related goods or services, how do you […]
