What is a trademark and why do i need it?

What is a trademark and why do i need it?

"In its 2019 fiscal year, the NCAA will generate 804 million U.S. dollars in revenue from television broadcast payments and licensing rights. Over the term of the contract the multimedia and marketing rights payments will reach a total of 13.09 billion U.S. dollars."-Statista

​The pandemic has caused a surge in creativity and business creation, but it has also caused a lot of desperation and many entrepreneurs and businesses are seeing fraudulent accounts created on social media advertising under their same business name. As horrifying as it sounds, this is one of the main reasons I urge trademark registration early on. Yes, trademark before your brand is big.
 
Let’s talk about what exactly a trademark is. A trademark can be a brand name, business name, or logo and it gives the holder federal protection and the exclusive right to use the trademark nationwide. Trademarks identify the source of goods or services and are meant to protect the public as consumers from confusion. To trademark your brand name, you must register with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and certain specific requirements must be met. In fact, until you have an officially registered trademark, you cannot stop others from using your same brand name or logo.
 
A trademark should not be confused with a patent or copyright. Although all three are areas of intellectual property.
 
Patents protect inventions and are granted for 20 years from the date of filing. There are two different types of patents, utility and design patents. When you think of utility patents, think of Coca-Cola’s secret recipe. For design patents think Coca-Cola bottle design and the iPhone.
 
Copyright protects authors of “original works of authorship”. When you think of copyrights, think art, song lyrics, literature, and as of recent, blog posts! Yes, bloggers can now copyright their blog posts.
 
As your brand grows trademarks can also be monetized through licensing. For example, all of your favorite college football team’s colors, logos, mascots, player’s numbers, and jerseys are trademarked. This means merchants, television broadcasters, and video games must receive permission and pay license fees to the NCAA for use of any team’s trademarks. The NCAA rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year from licensing alone. Because of this, the NCAA is very strict on infringers. It’s important to remember that you cannot protect your brand from infringers unless you have registered with the USPTO as I stated before. For this reason, it is important that you get a clearance search and register your brand name, logo, or business name as soon as possible BEFORE your brand grows and is out in the public for others to mimic and copy.
 
When you are ready to trademark your brand, please contact us and refer to our firm’s trademark page for more information, it can be found by clicking here. There are many online companies that will file your trademark without an attorney for a cheap price. You’ll find that most of these applications are rejected and the online company is not able to assist you with responding to the USPTO’s requests and office actions.

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