Business Lawyers Blog
A successful California business lives or dies by its brand. Your corporate name, logo, and slogan are often the first things a customer associates with your business. So it is crucial to protect your branding through the use of trademarks. The experienced California trademark attorneys at SLG offer a full range of legal services designed to help your business in this area.
What Does a Trademark Do (or Do Not Do)?
Although the term “trademark” is used broadly in everyday conversation, there are actually two types of marks used in branding–trademarks and service marks. A trademark is used to describe physical goods and products, while service marks describe services. For the sake of simplicity, we will just refer to both as “trademarks” in this article.
A trademark essentially does three things:
- It identifies you as the source of your goods and/or services.
- It provides legal protection from your brand.
- It helps you to protect against potential counterfeiting and fraud.
At the same time, it is also important to understand the limits of trademark protection:
- A trademark does not allow you to “own” a specific word outside of how it describes your particular good or service.
- A trademark does not protect a word or phrase that merely describes your product or service.
- A trademark does not protect generic words that are commonly used to describe the type of product or service that you offer.
Do You Need to Register a Trademark?
Unlike other forms of intellectual property, such as copyrights and patents, a trademark can effectively last indefinitely. Indeed, the only thing a business technically must do to become a trademark owner is to start using their mark in connection with the sale of goods and services.
That said, it is generally a good idea to register a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Registration provides a number of critical legal benefits:
- It enables you to assert nationwide rights in your trademark.
- You can legally use the registered trademark symbol when describing your product or service.
- It is the first step towards seeking international protection for your trademark under the Madrid Protocol.
Even with registration, however, the legal protection for a trademark only exists as long as it is used. There is no set expiration date for a mark. But in order to maintain federal registration, a mark owner must file a statement between the fifth and sixth anniversary of the initial registration demonstrating the mark is still in use. The mark owner must subsequently provide proof of continued use on the 10th anniversary of registration and every 10 years thereafter.
Speak with a California Intellectual Property Lawyer Today
Registering and protecting a trademark is not difficult. But there are a number of critical legal formalities that must be observed in order to ensure a brand receives the maximum protection benefits. If your company needs advice on this subject, contact SLG today online or call at 408-441-7500 to schedule a consultation.