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Written by : Stacee Sachse |
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our new subscriber mija dabeli ik i hope i'm getting his name right posted his question in a comment asking me when trademarking word does it matter if some letters are capitalized what about spaces and punctuation marks my name is andre Mincha from the father of trademark factory and here's my answer to this question first of all if you don't want the capitalization to matter the way to go is to have all caps basically when you put everything in all caps to the trademarks office it means that it can be any capitalization without any limitation so it could be all capitals for them or lower marks you can play around with any crazy combination a title case a random case whatever it is if you file your trademark as all capitals that to them means any case if you file your trademark with anything but all capitals in theory then it will be protected with respect to that capitalization however if you're filing with title case or all lowercase if they will rarely limit that protection to just that case when it starts mattering is when you file your trademark application for a trademark that's neither uppercase or lowercase nor title case nor sentence case so when you have some interesting or distinctive capitalization like for example your second and third letter in the word or something like that or for example I pad right you can have small I and then P which is capital P and then ad right that is a way to protect a specific capitalisation of a brand so that's the general rule all caps then protected regardless of capitalization anything beyond that usually given less weight unless we're talking about some distinctive way to capitalize words which is basically not the first letter in the word okay to your question about spaces and punctuation marks they're given very little weight because there is they don't make your brand distinctive right so if you have commas or dashes or spaces I couldn't go out there and trademark micro space soft or micro - soft or micro comma soft for software services or for software as a product because Microsoft owns their trademark and it really didn't matter wouldn't matter how they trademarked it with spaces without spaces what matters is distinctive elements of the brand and neither spaces nor punctuation marks create that distinctiveness for a brand I hope this answers your question and I know you Nihao already subscribe but if for everyone else out there if you found this video useful if it answers some of your questions make sure you subscribe we post a new video every single day and I'm sure there'll be something else for you to learn and if you've got a question for me that I haven't answered before make sure you post a comment below just like Mia did and I will do my best to answer your question in a video just like this one until then I will see you in the next video
Thanks for your comment Timothy Nesseth, have a nice day.
- Stacee Sachse, Staff Member
I love this question from Korra what right does anyone have to trademark a basic common word and tell anyone else that they cannot use it in their business name in this case the word is Road which isn't the title of our business name and roads is in theirs my name is Andre Minka from the founder of trademark Factory on this channel I've answered hundreds of questions just like this one and if you're interested in my opinion or just to learn about brands trademarks entrepreneurship intellectual property make sure you subscribe and get notified whenever the next video goes live and if you've got a question for me post a comment below and I'll answer your question in the video just like this one so going back to this question what right does anyone have to trademark a basic common word road versus roads well here's my answer to this questionanyone can trademark basic common words because trademarking is not about unique words unique phrases unique designs trademarks are about unique identifiers for products and services and there's a huge difference there you're not required to come up with fully original worth like think about it one of the most valuable brands out there Apple what could be more common than that but the word Apple uniquely identifies their brand the phones for computers for music right because they're not selling apples so as long as your company is not in a road construction business and as long as the other company is not in the road construction business then Road does not define what you do then it could be a word that's trademark able and if they had trademarked it first and they're in the same space as you are then not only do they have the right to trademark their brand not only do they have the right to enforce their trademark against you using it without their permission they'd be crazy not to because that's the whole idea for trademarking brands that you are given the monopoly over the use of your brand and you have the exclusive right to it and you have the right and almost an obligation to defend it against anybody else who uses the same brand without your permission you you have to do that because otherwise if everyone sees that you are allowing others to use your brand without your permission they're diluting your brand they're killing the value of your brand they're killing the value of your trademark at some point you will lose the ability to enforce your brand against others so again I don't know exactly what they trademarked I don't know exactly what your name is because you say the reward road is part of theirs and yours again being part of something is vague right depending on how dominant that word is in the whole brand for them and for you also host similar the products and services are that they offer that you offer maybe they're right maybe they're wrong but to go back to your point perfectly okay to trademark dictionary common words perfectly okay to enforce them against those who use the same or similar brand in connection with same or similar products and services they're doing what they're supposed to be doing and if you are not sure this is probably something that you should discuss with your attorneys now one last point before I call it a day with this video if you start a business and you give it a name it's your responsibility as the business owner to make sure that that's the name you can own and the next step is for you to actually make sure that you own the name because guess what what is the most important thing to make your brand a success the most important thing to make your brand a success is to make sure that it's your brand because if it's not your brand you can never make your brand a success because it's not your brand and the way to do it is with a trademark so I trade my factory that's what we do we help business owners protect their brands if you came up with a name and you want to see if it's trademark able go bulk a call with our strategy advisors to coalesce free go to trademark factory calm for it slash coal or just go to the homepage and the first big button you're gonna see is to book a free call with our strategy advisors do that and we'll take it from there if you like this video if you found it useful make sure you like this video make sure you subscribe make sure your comment below if you've got a comment if you've got a question and until then I will see you in the next video
Thanks Kim your participation is very much appreciated
- Stacee Sachse
About the author
I've studied medical psychology at Hampton University in Hampton and I am an expert in abrahamic religions. I usually feel dirty. My previous job was foreign language teacher I held this position for 9 years, I love talking about scutelliphily and bagpipes. Huge fan of Stephen R. Covey I practice formula 1 and collect disney pin trading.
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