Nationwide Trademark Protection

Companies should always watch out for their property and their legal rights. One of the best ways to protect your company’s name and reputation is with nationwide trademark protection.

Obtaining nationwide trademark protection is possible by registering your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The process to obtain a registered trademark is really quite simple, and I can help you with it.

Distinguish yourself

Trademarks have to distinguish the source of a good or service from other sources. That is the whole point of trademark protection. To obtain a registered trademark, your proposed mark must be distinguishable.

The easiest way to have a qualifying mark is to pick something that is “fanciful” or “arbitrary”. Fanciful marks are made up words like KODAK. Arbitrary marks are things like APPLE for computers: the word “apple” makes no sense applied to computers.

Gather your information

You first need to gather all your information for your trademark application. The application requires your company and contact information. And you will also need to describe the goods and/or services that you intend to market with the trademark.

Once you have your information together, you can contact a trademark attorney to help obtain your nationwide trademark protection. This provides enormous benefits to your company.

Block out competitors

A federal trademark registration will keep your competitors from using your trademark. But the protection is stronger than that.

Federal trademark law prohibits other people from doing things that are likely to confuse consumers about your trademark. For example, I cannot open a fast food restaurant called McDonald’s; they own the trademark for their name. But I also cannot start a restaurant called McDunuld’s. That name is not identical to McDonald’s trademark, but it is close enough to confuse consumers about what restaurant they are patronizing.

All across the country

An important feature of trademark protection is that it covers you nationwide. If you open a small e-commerce operation in Virginia, you can use a federal trademark registration to ensure that a competitor in California cannot infringe upon your name.

Without a federal trademark registration, you will not have this nationwide coverage. Yes, you can obtain trademark protection on a state level, but it cannot easily protect you across the country.

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