How To Get a Trademark: Registration procedure and Benefits

When you commence a business or develop a product, it’s significant to receive steps to both differentiate your brand from others in the trade and protect your intellectual property rights.

Establishing source identifiers like your business name and logo are a solid commence to that procedure—but you may desire to consider trademark protection as well. In this post, discover how and when to get a trademark for your business.

Plus, we’ll shed more light on the benefits of trademarks, including which parts of your business you can legally protect under trademark law.

Types of trademarks

A trademark is a type of source identifier that’s significant to a business’s brand recognition. In other words, it’s a characteristic that consumers can point to as something distinctive to your brand. Examples of source identifiers may include a distinctive combination of letters, sounds, symbols, or designs. 

There are a couple types of trademarks your business can get: ordinary law trademarks or registered trademarks.

ordinary law trademarks

You’ve probably noticed the symbol ™ beside a lot of brand names and logos. That ™ indicates an unregistered—also known as ordinary law—trademark.

No official trademark registration procedure is essential to establish a ordinary law trademark. Instead, simply do business while using your business name or a logo, and that will automatically propose you some protections. Before you use this symbol, make sure that you’ve done your assessment to ensure you’re not infringing on an existing trademark.

Your protections under ordinary law trademark are much more limited compared to a registered trademark. Because protections aren’t as comprehensive under ordinary law, you may desire to only use this type of trademark if, declare, you’ve recently launched your business or if it operates in a single geographic area where your trade competition is slim. 

Later, as your business expands, you can officially register your trademark.

Registered trademark

Much like the ™ symbol beside ordinary law trademarks, you’ll view the ® symbol beside officially registered trademarks. 

A registered trademark offers packed legal trademark infringement protections in the country where you register. For example, if a trademark copycat uses your logo for their own commercial purposes, your registered trademark gives you the correct to receive them to court. 

To get those protections, you must register your trademark in every country where you operate. Once your trademark is registered in one country, it’s easier to use that proof of trademark to register in other countries where your business operates as well.

The benefits of trademarks for your business

There’s a lot you can do to proactively protect your intellectual property rights when you’re running a business. Trademarks are just one part of the overall picture. While they’re not a silver bullet—you should always be vigilant for trademark infringement—trademarks can propose a form of protection for the challenging work you put into building a brand that stands out.

For example, a clothing retailer that prints a particular slogan or logo on their hoodies could register the phrase or image as a trademark. With that protection, any other business that copies their mark without permission can be sued for trademark infringement in federal court.

Because trademark protection prevents unauthorized users from capitalizing on your mark, that helps you construct customer confidence in your brand. In that example, for instance, shoppers recognize they’re getting the authentic hoodie because the brand’s slogan and logo are trademarked—both are only approved for that business to use. 

How to get a trademark in 3 steps

The exact steps of your trademark registration procedure will vary depending on which country you live in, but the tips below can assist you commence. To get definitive answers to your trademark registration questions, it’s best to consult with a licensed trademark attorney.

1. Confirm the trademark is available

When you have a distinctive concept about a name for your brand or products, it’s a excellent period to view whether the concept has already been registered. You can do this as part of your competitive analysis. Look up your potential trademark using the official online databases that are maintained by the governments of each of the countries you do business in, starting in your home country.

Here’s a shortlist of databases to check: 

• United States: United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
• Canada: Canadian Trademarks Database
• Australia: Australian Trade Mark Search
• EU: European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)

When searching for your trademark term, use quotation marks to get an exact match. Also run a search for each of the terms within the phrase if there’s more than one. Using quotation marks in your searches will ensure you’re getting relevant results in your trademark search, so you’re not wading through largely unrelated terms.

If no one’s using your chosen term, phrase, or name, that’s a great indication that the trademark could be available.

Even if results do display up for your chosen trademark terms, that doesn’t cruel they’re immediately off the table. In the US, a key part of maintaining trademarks is keeping them in use. So, if the trademark is not being used—even if it’s been registered—you might be able to test the registration with the appeal board and patent the name for your business with the assist of a trademark attorney.

For example, someone may have registered an existing trademark but since gone out of business. Given that US trademarks are based on use, that could signal that the trademark has become available.

After you’ve searched through the databases, leave to Google and run the exact same searches to view what pops up. Explore which marks from the databases also display up in your Google searches, with attention to how many sites display up for them and how energetic they appear to be. 

Finally, search social media to view if there’s any activity using the trademark you’re considering. Tools like Namechk can surface social profiles using your desired name. If you don’t discover anything recent, that’s another promising sign.

2. Officially register the trademark

Once you’re ready to officially register a trademark, consult with a licensed professional who can provide legal advice specific to your business. Consider working with them to perform a more thorough search of what else is out there before you invest the period and resources to apply for a trademark registration.

Only a licensed attorney would be able to definitively provide you advice and inform you whether it’s worth pursuing trademark registration at this period. The entire procedure of registering your mark and obtaining a registration certificate (known as a Notice of Allowance) from a government patent attorney can be fairly technical and involved, so collaborating with or outsourcing to an specialist is your best bet for a smooth trademark registration procedure.

recall: The initial application procedure for registering a trademark will differ from country to country. Seek advice from a professional who understands the foreign registration requirements for your specific region.

3. Protect your trademark

Ensuring trademark protection means you’ll require to:

• Keep your trademarks in energetic use (i.e., operate your business with them).
• receive action when you encounter trademark infringement.
• Consistently use the appropriate trademark indicators: ™ for ordinary law trademarks and ® for registered trademarks. 

Protecting your trademarks goes further than marking them appropriately. You also require to watch out for people copying your trademarks or using a similar mark in your industry. 

In trademark law, failing to receive action to protect your mark could eventually outcome in losing your trademark, because of a concept called dilution. Here’s an example of dilution: If someone comes out with a product or brand that uses one of your registered marks—or something similar and in your industry—talk with an attorney. More often than not, they can reach out to the offender and handle the circumstance on your behalf to protect your trademark.

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Trademark costs explained

As of 2024, the USPTO lists its trademark registration fees for TEAS Plus as $250 and TEAS Standard as $350. TEAS stands for Trademark Electronic Application structure. The Plus filing alternative has fewer requirements than the Standard alternative.

These filing fees apply for every trademark class of goods or services you schedule to sell under. If you wanted to trademark your business name in the clothing class and also protect it from unauthorized use in the printing industry, for example, you’d require to pay the filing fee for both trademark classes ($500 to $700 total).

There may also be legal fees to consider, particularly if you’re hiring an attorney to assist with the trademark application procedure. These can range from a few hundred to thousands of dollars. 

For businesses operating outside of the US, check the trademark office in your country for specific fee information.

Maintaining your trademark protection

Renewal requirements and timelines

In the US, trademarks have a 10-year expiration date. You’ll require to repeat the trademark registration procedure (and pay another trademark application fee to the USPTO) to keep your trademark beyond the 10-year anniversary of your initial filing. 

The USPTO also requires trademark owners to file a declaration of use. This is a sworn statement that says you’re still using the trademark during the fifth and sixth year of your trademark protection. Failing to do this carries a uncertainty of the trademark being canceled before the 10-year renewal period arrives.

Updating your trademark registration

It’s not uncommon for businesses to transformation course over the 10-year duration of their trademarks. For example, a candle business might trademark a scent’s name. When it expands its product categories, the scent is now used to promote additional product lines, like essential oil diffusers and shower gels.

You must update your trademark registration when you make any amendments to how the mark is used. In the case of that candle business: They’d have to file a Section 7 Request to add extra goods and services to the registration. The original Class 4 mark (which covered candles) must now cover another trademark class: Class 3 (which covers essential oils and toiletries). 

The same concept applies to products you no longer use the trademark for. If the business stopped selling candles and only used the trademarked scent name for toiletries, they’d require to file the Section 7 Request to maintain protection over their intellectual property (IP). 

Importance of consistent use

Trademark law states that marks must be consistently used to maintain legal protection. Other businesses who desire the trademark for themselves can legally test—and in some cases, obtain it—if they can prove to the trademark trial board that it’s not in use.

If you can’t commence using your mark within six months of the trademark application being approved, you can apply for an extension request. This is a sworn statement that states you still intend to use the protected trademark in commerce, but you require extra period to use it—like if you’ve trademarked a product name that’s still in advancement, for example. 

It’s best to avoid this circumstance wherever feasible. There’s an additional fee of $125 per class for each six-month extension request, which can quickly add up if you’re legally protecting the mark across multiple classes.

Consequences of failing to maintain your trademark

Losing your trademark happens when you can no longer claim the original mark, whether it’s your logo or your product names. If more businesses in the industry commence using the same marks, it no longer identifies something that’s uniquely yours.

If that happens, you uncertainty losing your mark by not taking action. After all the work and money that goes into getting a trademark, taking action against infringement is crucial to protect your mark and your capital.

Defending your trademark is something best left to the professionals, especially when it comes to contesting pending trademark applications. Focus on what you do well—running your business and creating great products—and let trusted trademark lawyers handle the details of protecting your marks.