Trademarking a logo safeguards your brand identity and prevents unauthorized use nationwide. Follow a structured process to secure legal protection effectively.
By Brad Nakase, Attorney
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Establishing the identity of your business can be accomplished through the creation of a logo. To safeguard your rights, if you have created one, you should know how to trademark a logo. It’s not that simple, but it’s crucial to do it right.
You should either deal with a specialized company or pay an attorney to manage the procedure for you. Additionally, you should anticipate that the trademarking procedure will take at least six months to finish.
Prior to moving further with the procedure, you must demonstrate that your created logo is genuinely available. This is a vital part of learning how to trademark a logo.
Your design needs to be original in order to be registerable; it can’t be generic, widely used, or very similar to previously registered logos.
Thus, to begin the trademark search procedure, look through the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Attorney’s Office) logo trademark database, looking for trademarks and logos that have been registered by other businesses.
Although they are not all created equal, there are a number of methods to acquire lawful ownership of the logo your business has chosen.
Just adopting your logo is the easiest approach to acquiring rights. Since you will only be able to possess ownership rights in the region where you are utilizing your mark, this is the cheapest and riskiest alternative. You won’t have any control over who uses it elsewhere.
Additionally, you have the option to register your logo as a trademark with the State’s Secretary in the state in which you plan to use it. This allows individuals in other states to use the logo while protecting their rights exclusively inside that state.
If you’re serious about protection, especially across the U.S., you need to know how to trademark a logo federally. Submitting a trademark application to the USPTO is the most complex option. Applying online will cost you $350, and applying on paper will cost you $850.
Again, since the application has to precisely define the mark in language that the USPTO uses, you will greatly benefit from having a legal professional or specialized agency assist you with its preparation.
You will be able to use the trademark anywhere in the United States once it has been registered at the USPTO. By registering the logo, you can enforce your ownership through legal action. This is one of the key reasons to understand how to trademark a logo properly.
By establishing the trademark, you also have the authority to prevent the importation of goods bearing your logo from other nations, which is important if your product is fake.
Once the trademark has been registered with the USPTO, your job is not finished.
A trademark watch is necessary for your business to safeguard your logo and ensure that it is not being used by others. Specialized lawyers and businesses deal with this type of continuous, demanding labor. A stop and desist letter is sent if they discover that someone else is utilizing your logo or trying to trademark too similar of a brand. They do this continuously. Knowing how to trademark a logo helps protect your brand’s identity and long-term value.
Have a quick question? We answered nearly 2000 FAQs.
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