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10 things you need to know about trademarking a logo

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Hemapriya kanakkupillai
10 things you need to know about trademarking a logo

You’ve designed a logo to represent your business. Before sending that logo out into the world, you should consider how to protect the design, and the business behind it, through correct use of trademark law. The transition from concept to operation, from design to brand, is a crucial one. 

1. What is a trademark?

A trademark registration online protects a word, slogan, image, logo or some combination that connects products with the maker of those products from being used by someone else. A trademark can take many shapes, as long as the mark you want to protect is distinctive.

The public should recognize the trademark as an identifier of the product‘s source. A classic example of a trademark is the Nike swoosh symbol. When you see that mark on a pair of sneakers you instantly recognize those shoes as a Nike product.

2. What does a trademark protect?

The purpose of a trademark is to protect your business’s brand identity in the marketplace. To use another shoe company as an example, the Adidas trademark of three white stripes lets people know that the shoes they’re about to buy were designed and made by the Adidas company. If a company begins selling shoes with two white stripes, people could easily think those shoes also are Adidas shoes. Not only does Adidas lose money from the lost sale, but they also lose consumer confidence, if the similar looking shoes are inferior in quality. The law says that your trademark is infringed upon when another company’s brand elements are similar enough to confuse consumers. Infringing companies must stop using the similar trademark.

3. Who owns the logo trademark?

Trademark ownership comes from actually using the trademark for products in commerce. The logo designer usually isn’t the trademark owner. The business owner who uses the trademark properly owns the trademark.

4. When does a logo become a trademark?

Your logo becomes a trademark when it appears on labels, packaging or the product itself and the public recognizes the company behind that particular combination of colors and shapes. Imagine you see a sign with golden arches; you probably are picturing a Happy Meal (also trademarked) or similar fast food item at a McDonald’s restaurant.

5. What do you gain by registering your logo as a trademark?

In the United States, trademark rights begin when the trademark is put into commercial use. That means as soon as you begin advertising your product with your logo, your logo is technically trademarked in the eyes of the law. But these automatic, common law trademark rights are geographically limited and difficult to enforce. So even though you don’t have to go to the trouble of officially registering your trademark.

6. Does your logo qualify for registration?

Though the Patent Office approves hundreds of thousands of trademark applications annually, not all trademarks are eligible for registration. Trademarks cannot be offensive or misleading, for example. Applications for trademarks that are too similar to existing ones will be denied unless the products are completely unrelated, as in the case of Apple Computers and Apple Corps, a record company owned by The Beatles. Marks that sound alike, mean the same or are visually similar to each other are likely to cause confusion among consumers and won’t be registered.

7. When can a trademark be registered?

You should begin the process of trademarking a logo as soon as possible, submitting an intent-to-use application even before your business or product launches. The trademark won’t officially be registered until the Patent Office completes its review and approval of an application.

8. What are the strongest trademarks?

The point of a trademark is to distinguish your thingamajig from the other guy’s. Therefore the trademark must be distinctive. Trademarks are classified along a spectrum from weak to strong, with the strongest being the most easily protected by law because they are distinct in the minds of the public and are readily distinguishable in the market. The strongest marks tend to be fanciful or arbitrary. Invented words, like Zynga, and words with no association with the protected goods, such as Apple, are stronger than marks that are merely suggestive or descriptive.

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