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hey this is attorney elizabeth potts weinstein and today we're going to talk about how to file your own trademark application with the united states patent and trademark office including a step-by-step tutorial of exactly how to do it on the uspto.gov website in this video i'm assuming that you already have most of the stuff put together for your trademark application and you're ready to go if you don't have that stuff done check out this playlist and you will get all the step-by-step bits of informations and decisions you need to have already done before you get started with your filing so the first thing to do is to go to the uspto.gov website here we have the website for uspto.gov united states patent and trademark office if you go under trademarks you can go to apply online under apply online are a bunch of different categories for forms now if you're just filing for the first time you're going to be doing the initial application form but there's also all the other forms are accessible here so if you need to respond to something from the trademark office file your intent to use forms which i will talk about later change your address any of that kind of stuff you can find those forms here so you're gonna go to initial application forms now with the united states patented trademark office there's one online application system but you have two different categories of filings one is the plus and the other is the standard there's a number of differences between them but the biggest difference besides one of them being less expensive than the other is that with the plus you have to select from a list of classes and with the standard you can make up your own class or description of your products and services i highly recommend that if it's at all possible you select the plus not just to save money but because if you are picking your class from a list of classes you're going to have formatted it correctly and also will make it much faster and easier for them to approve your application the only time we really use this standard is if what my client is doing we just can't find anything on the list that is even remotely applicable or we're applying the united states basing it upon a foreign application from another country and their descriptions are so different we want to use their descriptions here in this filing to the extent possible there are also additional statements that are required in the plus application that you must make at the time of application the ones that typically come up the most are the name of a living person or that your trademark includes reference to a specific geographic area so i can file a trademark with my name in it however i have to give permission to myself to file that application so this is something to be aware of if you're doing a plus application this list also applies to you not just the class selection so let's say we're ready to apply so we're going to start the application the next thing you're going to need to do is to log in if you don't have a login and email for the uspto.gov then you can create one otherwise you need to log in with you log with an email address a password they also have a second level of authentication the next screen you come to is the beginning of the application there is a video that you can watch i recommend doing that because it's always great to get more information and this is a dynamic application so when you select things it will change what the next questions are also be aware that if you have inactivity it will log you out you can save your session though and come back to it later and that's what this is about if you save your session then you have to upload a file to create it back in so here i'm going to pretend that i'm not an attorney filing the application i'm going to pretend that i'm doing this myself and i'm gonna pretend i'm doing a t e t e a s plus application so the first screen is who is the owner of this trademark now if you are a sole proprietorship then or you're filing as an individual inventor then it will be you but if you have an llc or a corporation it'll probably belong to that business instead of you personally so let's say my i have a llc called potsfeinstein llc and that's going to be the owner of the mark then i click limited liability company for the entity type and it's going to change what some of these questions are so it will take a minute to load now i have to select what state it's in or if it's not in the u.s then you select this sometimes i run into an issue where someone has a business that's from another country and so they so their entities are have different names but the trademark office does have places for you to put that information to now we're going to put the mailing address main street this is a made up address well it might actually exist but that's not my address okay now domicile address this is something that's very important for anybody who is using their mailing address that's not your physical location you have to have a physical location address in here this physical location address will not appear on the publicly available database so you don't have to worry about that from a privacy perspective but you have to have an address so they know that you're physically located here in the united states if you are not physically located here in the united states then you're gonna have to have an attorney who's located here to represent you i don't necessarily think that rule is fair but that's just the rule so let's assume that this is actually my physical location you can put in a phone number and fax number you don't have to put in a phone number but sometimes the trademark examiner will call you because you messed up something your application that is relatively straightforward to fix so if you don't put a phone number in here there's nobody they can call they might email you but some examiners are not into email otherwise they'll have to issue an office action which is a lot more complicated so i'm going to put in an email address this is my business email address you can also put in the website for your business i recommend doing this so when they do a search and you come up for your own trademark they know that it's you so i'm gonna put in my website address then i hit continue it's going to look at everything i filled out and give me information about things that i missed or i messed up in the filing so it tells me that i did not enter a telephone number i'm just going to skip it for right now but generally i'd recommend putting in one it does not get listed publicly so you don't have to worry about that now i can finally put in my trademark so i'm going to use the trademark that we talked about in one of the other videos which is irene whoops i on the trail this is a person who has a business about hiking irene is not this person's name irene they're using as an abstract concept now here's special standard characters special form sound mark those are the different kinds of trademarks so a special form a lot of times would be a logo i'm not going to go into sound marks that's fairly rare for someone to do but th
Thanks for your comment Calista Roca, have a nice day.
- Jeff Hollan, Staff Member
Thanks for this interesting article
Thanks Elinore your participation is very much appreciated
- Jeff Hollan
About the author
I've studied batrachology at Sterling College, Vermont in Craftsbury Common and I am an expert in universal algebra. I usually feel awake. My previous job was land surveyor I held this position for 9 years, I love talking about meditation and barbecuing. Huge fan of Aaron Paul I practice lawn bowling and collect police memorabilia.
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