Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Get Trademark Savvy and Protect Your Creativity


Will my patent keep others from using my product name?

No, but you may need a trademark which is not the same as a patent.  While there are similarities, they serve different purposes. 

According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design used in business to indicate a source of the goods, i.e. your business, and to distinguish those goods from others. A service mark is the same as a trademark, except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. 

A patent for an invention grants a specific legal property right to the inventor—“the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale or selling” the same invention.
A word or phrase that is commonly used or already connected with another product or service in the same industry cannot be trademarked.  For example, a generic term like "search engine" can’t be trademarked, but a unique name, like Google, can be. If your name, however, is generic but used in an industry not typically related to the meaning of the term, you may be able to trademark it - an example is Apple Computer.
As a general rule, you can trademark your business name if you use it when advertising directly to your customers. If you don't use your business name in direct communication with your customers, you probably can't, because you're not connecting your name to your brand and its attributes. If your business name is a large part of your marketing, you should consider trademarking it.
If your company is the first to use a unique mark to identify your products or services, you don't need to register your mark to gain rights to it. You must, however, add the trademark symbol, TM, to the mark you're claiming rights to. It's not quite a substitute to registering a mark through the USPTO, which establishes ownership beyond a doubt.  

Everything you need to research and apply for a federal trademark is at the USPTO Web site, www.uspto.gov. The application process requires that you identify goods or services under specific categories. But misunderstanding these categories and filing too broadly or too narrowly can ruin your trademark and cause problems later on. A qualified trademark attorney will help prevent such problems.  
Also, trademarks can be registered at the state level which is simple, fairly quick and inexpensive. That only protects your trademark in your state but that may be all that you need.
Management Advisor   Marketing Advisor   Business Communications

JWB Interest, LLC  2012 All Rights Reserve

No comments:

Post a Comment