Table of Contents
Written by : Hassan Cloos |
Current |
Write a comment |
Write a comment
a client calls me says he wants to trademark a brand he knows it's being used by another company but it's in a different category one of those categories you reflect in your application to the USPTO the trademark office of the US government anything very early on you have to keep in mind that while you're filling out a trademark application you have to indicate the category in which your brand is working meaning if you are using that specific brand for clothing retail you need to indicate that that's not the same as saying that your brand is limited to that one category and everybody else can choose any other category they want to still use your brand why it's because the basis of trademark infringement is consumer confusion it's nothing to do with categories if a consumer will be confused but the usage of if that your brand in a different category but will be confused as to the source of that brand meaning they will think it's your brand that's going to be a problem so while the application demanded and while the application says that if you want to choose multiple categories you've got to pay for those multiple categories your brand your usage of that trademark for that Brian is not really going to be limited only to that category so when it comes to trademark infringement where they're looking at whether or not you've infringe on somebody else's trademarks they're not only going to be concerned with whether or not you are the same category they're going to look at whether or not you're in logical categories that other applicants would logically be involved in so while somebody might have an application with a specific category like a retail clothing his brand might still get protection in wholesale you might get some protection in related items like outside of clothing like home goods or house products or maybe some electronics depending on what's common in that industry and what other kind of manufacturers and retailers have been involved in so when looking at your trademark and noticing that somebody else may have a trademark in it another kind of category always ask yourself if you were to present this to the market to the consumer it is likely that the consumer will be confused by that mark thinking that your product your mark with your product might be related to products associated with the other come trademarks are not about exactly it's about confusion about whether or not the consumer be confused after the source as to the manufacturer as the retailers whoever providing that one product to always look at it from the side of the consumer so is your brand going to be confused with somebody else's brand because even though they're in different categories they have the exact same name if you have any questions any concerns any issues you want to discuss just leaving down below I'd love to talk see you next time
Thanks for your comment Mary Bloomgren, have a nice day.
- Hassan Cloos, Staff Member
trademark classes now we should talk a little bit about the classes of goods and services that you can file a trademark in when you file a trademark application one of the first things we do when working with clients on their trademark application is understanding what goods or services they are offering the reason this is important is because the rights you receive in a trademark are limited to the specific goods or services you offer in other words the list of the goods and services is an important aspect of the trademark application as the scope of the applicant's rights in the trademark is defined and limited by the scope of the classes that you list in your application this list is also known as the specification what this means to you in practical terms is that when you're filing your trademark application we have to select different categories called classes of goods and services for the trademark essentially every good and services known to mankind has been divided into forty five different classes by the International classification system established by the nice agreement concerning the International classification of goods and services for the purposes of registration of marks an international treaty consummated on the 15th of June 1957 in Nice France the nice agreement is open to states who are parties to the Paris Convention for the protection of industrial property in total the nice classification system contains around 10,000 indications of goods and 1,000 indications of services the advantage of having classes is that you can have very similar even identical trademarks in different industries which do not result in the end-user being confused for example you have Dove chocolate and Dove soap you've got Delta Airlines and Delta faucets and there's a lot of other Delta's out there as well the reason these trademarks can coexist is because there are vastly different markets if I'm in the market to buy a body soap I'm not going to confuse that with the name of a chocolate maker now there are always exceptions every rule but in general the rule is that if a trademark is in a different line of business or a different channel trait even if it's identical to a pre-existing trademark they can co-exist an obvious exception would be trademarks that are defined for the Paris Convention to have become well-known like Nike or coca-cola you can't go make coca-cola soap without confusing and users as everybody knows coca-cola it's just not gonna happen the classes are number 1 through 45 classes 1 to 34 related Goods and classes 35 to 45 relate to services now let's say you're selling clothing sunglasses in purses those actually fall into three different categories clothing is class 25 purses would be class 18 and sunglasses in class 9 the significance to you is that the trademark offices filing fees are computed based on how many classes and you are filing now some countries allow you a single fee for up to three classes others charge by class and the final filing costs will be multiplied by as many classes as you're trying to register so if filing one trade back in one class costs two hundred and forty dollars now you will be paying seven hundred and twenty dollars to file a trademark application in three separate classes now this is where small business owners have to be very careful about their strategy for registering a trademark and how many classes they actually want to include when filing a trademark as the cost can raise very quickly so at the end of the day we're trying to figure out what goods or services are we offering what are the applicable classes and then what strategy do we want to take do we have the budget to apply for classes that are only tangential and not really critical to our business or do we need to register in less classes to keep the cost within budget another important aspect of using classes is the ability to exclude classes when there is a conflict with another similar trademark when an examiner rejects your trademark because it is descriptive of its goods for services for example when you need to overcome an Chinn for an opposition based on the likelihood of confusion you can decide to exclude certain classes of goods and services that are similar to that of the similar trademark in order to overcome that objection an applicant may also restrict his specification nor to overcome an objection made under absolute grounds where the trademark is found to be descriptive by using restrictions and positive or negative terms such as alcoholic beverages consisting of vodka rum or alcoholic beverages none of which being whiskey or gin you may be able to overcome a refusal for an opposition citing an earlier trademark that already covers whiskey and gin beverages please feel free to watch more of our videos to get valuable insights but the mechanics of applying for trademark registrations defending your marks opposing other conflicting Mart's dealing with office actions and many other intellectual property issues my name is jonathan morton and i have a licensed US attorney and a member of the trade markers network don't forget to subscribe
Thanks vakanaw your participation is very much appreciated
- Hassan Cloos
About the author
I've studied esotericism at University of South Carolina-Beaufort in Bluffton and I am an expert in macroeconomics. I usually feel loved. My previous job was irrigation engineer I held this position for 24 years, I love talking about table tennis and laser tag. Huge fan of Maroon 5 I practice sledding and collect hockey cards.
Try Not to laugh !
Joke resides here...