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If you have developed a recent product or service, the next step is to create a memorable brand, trademark and slogan. Before you begin displaying them on your product packaging or on your website, take a few minutes to make sure each one is available for use. If you do not do this, you may face a costly problem in the future.
I’m talking about trademarks and the risk of violating another person’s rights.
It only takes a few minutes to check whether the brand of your recent product is already another person’s trademark or confusingly similar to a used trademark. Start by doing a quick search on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and each major mobile app stores – the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Don’t stop there. To ensure your brand name or term is available, perform a free site search United States Patent and Trademark Office website.
You don’t need to register your brand or trademark to start using it. In fact, the USPTO is not going to register your trademark until you have products bearing that trademark in the market. Trademark rights arise from the use of the trademark, not from registration.
This is good, practical advice for every entrepreneur. However, I’ll say instantly that to obtain legal advice, you must contact a good lawyer specializing in mental property (IP) matters.
Value of registered trademarks
You could also be surprised to learn that you could register slogans and slogans as trademarks to protect your mental property. A registered trademark makes it easier to brand products and services and build goodwill and market recognition. Unique trademarks also reduce confusion.
Business owners are so keen to protect their mental property that they filed over 181,000 trademark applications in the first quarter of 2024. Securing your trademark registration with the federal government requires paying an application fee and using an online service or hiring specialized lawyers to handle the paperwork – I like to recommend the latter. Additionally, trademark owners must renew their trademark registrations every 10 years.
Trademark infringement
As a small business owner, it’s possible you’ll determine to use a slogan you want without checking whether it is available. You may think it is going to be fantastic if you simply serve the local market and the trademark owner operates elsewhere. However, if the name or phrase has already been registered for use in connection with or in connection with your product or service, it’s possible you’ll be guilty of trademark infringement.
You may imagine that it’s clever to imitate a famous brand or registered slogan by making minor adjustments. Unfortunately, courts often treat such use as infringement if the relevant public wrongly assumes that your product or service is endorsed or sponsored by the company with the registration or that you just and your organization are in some way affiliated with that company.
You could also be wondering whether the threat of motion on a breach matters. It does. If you are caught using a slogan that is the subject of, or is confusingly similar to, one other person’s registered trademark, do not be fooled into pondering that you could ask for forgiveness as a substitute of permission. Most business owners shall be vigilant in protecting their investments. After all, they have spent years working to get consumers or other goal audiences to associate the slogan with their company.
Trademark owners are obliged to protect them
Part of the responsibility of owning a trademark is protecting its use. If you do not do this, you’ll lose the ability to implement it if a direct competitor tries to steal it from you or uses a confusingly similar trademark. So don’t blame trademark owners for sending you an email or stop and desist notice. It’s their duty – and that is your mistake. The worst thing you may do is ignore any such communication and hope it goes away.
To highlight my company’s brand, I have invested heavily in trademarks. My registered passwords appear in my company’s online and email marketing materials. I have Website positioning-optimized my taglines to show rating when potential customers search for the solutions we sell.
I recently got here across a company that was using one of my trademarks in the app store.
When consumers search for my trademark, they will click on a link that can take them to one other application. The results of this, leading to potential lack of revenue and confusion for customers, is exactly the situation that trademark law is designed to protect against.
In this case, I proceeded with the assumption of positive intention. To resolve this issue, I wrote an email to the infringers, explained what I had discovered, and asked them to stop using my trademarked product name. Fortunately, they agreed to stop.
Unfortunately, not all trademark infringers react so positively. In one other situation, a direct competitor ignored my polite emails regarding illegal use of my registered trademark.
In this case I used to be particularly concerned because there was a real risk of misleading potential customers. When I raised this concern, the perpetrators didn’t apologize. Instead, they argued that there could be no confusion in the market.
The next step was to ask our legal counsel to explain the violation. We proceed to vigorously defend against this violation.
If, as a business owner, you propose to use specific wording, design, logo or slogan to brand your product, take a few minutes to make sure it is accessible and not confusingly similar to another person’s trademark. Better yet, develop and register your wording, design or logo.
Trademark law protects the owner’s mental property. The most important goal is to avoid losing customers and revenue. Regardless of whether the illegal use takes place on a local market or nationally, whether it is accidental or intentional, entrepreneurs should be careful not to use another person’s trademark or something confusingly similar.