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Trademark

A Trademark is a brand name. A trademark or service mark includes any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used or intended to be used to identify and distinguish the goods/services of one seller or provider from those of others, and to indicate the source of the goods/services.[1]


Trademark Registration

Registering A Trademark[2]
The Lanham Act of 1946 established current federal trademark law and the procedure we follow today for the registration of trademarks with the USPTO in Washington, D.C. A trademark must meet certain qualifications to be accepted on the USPTO Principal Register and reap its many benefits. Keep these points in mind as you decide whether to register a trademark:

  • No trademarking of common or generic terms. For obvious reasons, the USPTO does not allow trademarking of common or generic terms that are used by many or everyone to describe a type of company, product, or service. Furthermore, the USPTO states that registered trademarks may not be "immoral, deceptive or scandalous matter," or "disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, institutions, beliefs or national symbols." Nor may they be "merely descriptive," "deceptively misdescriptive," "primarily geographically misdescriptive," "primarily merely a surname" or "functional."
  • Use distinctive names. The more distinctive your business, product or service name, the more likely it will be available for you to trademark.
  • Conduct a trademark search. There are two types of searches you can conduct, giving you varying types and depths of information.
    • Online trademark search. You can conduct an online search with a screening tool such as BizFilings’ Trademark Explorer™. This shows terms and logos that are already trademarked by others. This search may be limited to federal databases and may not always capture all instances of a trademarked term.
    • Comprehensive trademark search. A comprehensive trademark search is the only way to see if there are variations of your desired name or logo that have been registered, if your desired name or logo is in use in a state, if it is in use as a common law trademark, or if a trademark registration filing has been abandoned. It is best to have the report created by a company specializing in comprehensive trademark search reports and then reviewed by an attorney for a legal opinion on whether you can proceed with your desired name without infringing on anyone else’s mark, and also whether your desired name is a good candidate for trademark registration.


References

  1. Definition: What is a Trademark? USPTO
  2. What should be considered when registering a trademark? BizFilings