How can i trademark my brand [Fact Checked]

Last updated : Aug 13, 2022

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Can I trademark my brand?

Trademarking your business through the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) allows you to legally protect your business's brand. However, it is a legal process, so hiring a private attorney who specializes in trademark law or going through a trademark registration company is highly recommended, but not required.

How do I trademark my brand for free?

Can you trademark your logo for free? You can not register a trademark for free. However, what you can do is establish something known as a "common law trademark" for free. You can do this by simply opening for business.

How much does it cost to get a brand trademarked?

The basic cost to trademark a business name ranges from $225 to $600 per trademark class. This is the cost to submit your trademark application to the USPTO. The easiest and least expensive way to register your trademark is online, through the USPTO's Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS).

How do I legally trademark a brand name?

Key takeaway: To register and trademark your brand name, search the TESS database for similar brand names, fill out the trademark application and submit it to the USPTO for review.

How long does a trademark last?

A federal trademark lasts 10 years from the date of registration, with 10-year renewal terms. Between the fifth and sixth year after the registration date, the registrant must file an affidavit to state that the mark is still in use.

Should I get a trademark or LLC first?

4. Should you get an LLC first or trademark? Yes, you should get an LLC first before a trademark because the trademark application will need to identify the LLC as the trademark owner. You should create an LLC or business entity before you file a trademark application.

Should I copyright or trademark my logo?

How to legally protect your logo design. To protect your logo, you need a trademark or service mark (trademarks are generally used for products, while service marks are usually applied to services). You should not copyright or patent a logo design.

How do I trademark a slogan?

Go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website.
Check the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) database. Make sure the slogan isn't already registered in the same category.
Submit your trademark application. Pay the filing fee.

How can I protect my logo?

Do a trademark search in USPTO or EUIPO for similar trademarks to make sure yours doesn't conflict with another registered mark.
Complete a trademark application.
Wait and monitor for progress.

What is the difference between copyright and trademark?

Copyright protects original work, whereas a trademark protects items that distinguish or identify a particular business from another. Copyright is generated automatically upon the creation of original work, whereas a trademark is established through common use of a mark in the course of business.

How do I register a brand name?

Register on the trademark office portal:
Trademark search:
Filing of trademark application:
Examination of trademark application:
Show Cause Hearing:
Publication of Mark in Trademark Journal:
Trademark registration & certification:

How do I patent my logo?

No, It Isn't Possible to Patent a Name To protect your brand name and logo, you will need to utilize the trademark registration service. Both patents and trademarks are registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. You will need to submit the proper application and pay the appropriate fees.

How long does it take to trademark a name?

Usually, the process takes 12 to 18 months. Registering your trademark is a complex procedure that involves your application moving through various stages. Learning about each stage in the process will help you understand why getting a trademark takes as long as it does.

What are the three types of trademarks?

What you'll learn: Arbitrary and Fanciful Trademarks. Suggestive Trademarks. Descriptive Trademarks.

How do I sell a trademarked item?

The only way to legally sell items with a trademark that you do not own is to obtain a license from the trademark owner. Trademarks are valuable property rights and are vigorously protected by their owners in most cases -- even against a small, localized business.

Can you lose a trademark?

You can lose a trademark in a variety of ways. You can lose a mark through abandonment. A mark will be considered abandoned if you stop using it for three consecutive years and you have no intent to resume its use. You can also lose a mark through improper licensing or improper assignment.

When should I trademark my logo?

The best strategy is to think about trademarks from the very beginningâ€”ideally, when you're choosing your business name and logo and forming your business entity. Your business name can form the core of your brand, and it can also create serious trademark issues.

Who needs a trademark?

Business owners that have a distinctive business name, motto, logo, slogan, symbol to represent their product, service or business may want to consider registering it as a trademark from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, a federal agency, and/or a similar state agency.

Can I trademark a name without a business?

You can't register a trademark for non-business purposes. You can only trademark a brand name that you're using in business or that you intend to use in business in the near future. You can't register a generic or descriptive name. Your trademark name has to be distinctive or unique in some way to be approved.

What can you not trademark?

Proper names or likenesses without consent from the person.
Generic terms, phrases, or the like.
Government symbols or insignia.
Vulgar or disparaging words or phrases.
The likeness of a U.S. President, former or current.
Immoral, deceptive, or scandalous words or symbols.
Sounds or short motifs.

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Comment by Avery Helbling

so you want to trademark a brand first off i think it's a great idea if you're an e-commerce seller especially an amazon seller to go ahead and to brand your products because it really allows you to differentiate yourself from your competition and in addition it's going to protect your phrase or your brand that you're going to be trademarking here so today i'm going to share with you guys step by step how i actually go through the application you do not need a lawyer however it is recommended by the united states patent and trademark office but for me and you know just being an individual seller third-party merchant on amazon it's sometimes best to go ahead and do this yourself because honestly it's fairly easy to do so so today i'm going to take you step by step on some things that we need to do before we start our application then we'll get into the application for a golf brand that i'm trademarking and we'll finish it up so you know what to do next okay so the first thing that you have to do before you even get into your trademark application is to understand what your brand is and what are you trademarking for us today we are going to be trademarking the brand of vibrae golf it's italian for to live golf it's a brand i'm going to be using for some training aids coming up here in q4 during the holiday season so there's a link in the description and this is going to be our trademark like sorry trademark electronic search system we're going to search for that trademark brand and you're going to be searching on your behalf for your trademark brand to see if someone is actively using it if someone is actively using your trademark you cannot use that so you'll have to find a new brand name so the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to go to this section where it says select a search option and we're going to click this first one where it says new user once you click that there's one thing to do on the left here and we're going to type in our trademark brand i usually filter this down to just the live trademarks i really don't care about the dead trademarks that aren't active uh and then i'll go down to search term here so again ours was vivare golf with the space between them type in your trademark here after you do that click submit query and you're either gonna be brought to a screen where it says there are no records found which is great so that means that i can use and trademark this brand name as is now let's go through an example where we do find so i'll just type in vibrae live trademarks and as you can see there are a lot of live trademarks just with the vivre name in them or by itself so if you come across here and you see a lot of trademarks that have the existing brand name that you want to use odds are that you cannot use that i mean you could go into each one of these and see what class they are trademarked under but it's really going to take a lawyer to come in here and fully understand if you can or cannot do it my word of advice is if you have all of these listed here for your trademark name that you want to use go ahead find something different it isn't the end of the world so for us when we searched it for vibrate golf it was not located on here so that's assurance that i can go ahead proceed with my application and i can make sure that it gets submitted and approved next we uh we need to go and figure out if we're going to be doing a logo for our trademark or if we're just going to do basic text so i want to do a logo that has this cursive like text it's uh dr defoe text so i'll be doing a logo for this demonstration for you if you really don't care if it's um you know the design of the trademark itself you can just do a basic formatted text and uh you don't have to go through this entire process however if you do want to do a logo make sure you use some type of software to create it like this and then you're going to want to save it as a jpeg file i'm using canva.com great free online software that you can use you can go ahead and create free logos such as this simple one right here make sure that you save it in a jpeg format because that's the only format that they will accept and then you want to make sure that your file size is under i believe it's 944 pixels on either side as you can see this is a thousand by thousand it's too large so we need to reduce that down to uh 500 by 500 i think the minimum is 250 by 250. so just make sure you're within that and turn the quality up and then i will save this and download it to my downloads folder alright so that's step two we're almost there to the application step three in the final step before we can actually get into the application and please do these steps because it's going to save you time the last thing you want to do is submit an application and it gets denied by the government because you didn't follow some of these steps or you didn't do your due diligence that you need to next we are going to be searching the trademark id manual so this manual is an assortment of all these classes that are filed and services on behalf of people like us and companies now we need to search this because in order to decide if we're going to go with the teas plus or the t's standard application two different applications we need to make sure that there is a class that's out there that relates to our products if there isn't a class that relates to our product we're going to go with the more expensive option which is the teas standard and it's about 350 dollars per class or service so let's say that you have a brand where you are selling wallets you go ahead you fill out this application you get your trademark for that specific class now that does not mean that you can go and use your brand name to sell stereo equipment or lights because that trademark is only eligible in that class or service so that's one thing to keep in mind is that you're only trademarking within a specific narrow niche per se and that's one thing you have to keep in mind when you're going about this so in here what you want to type in is what your product is so for us it's going to be a golf training aid i'm just going to take golf training to see what we have so you can see a bunch of different classes come up i do not pay attention to the ones that are strikethroughed and then just focus on the ones that relate to your product so we're going through these uh it's a golf training cage that would not relate to my putting device that i'm creating the next one golf practice platforms it's a golf apparatus that would work for what i'm doing and but i'm going to take a look at the rest of them just to make sure this third one down here a motorized golf tripping practice aide nope mine's not motorized and it's not a brace that will be worn on the hand so if you're if you type this in and you can try a couple different searches maybe golf aid next but if you find one that's good news you don't really remember this yet because you will search this later on the application but if you search this and you couldn't find anything or anything that related to your product you're going to have to go through th

Thanks for your comment Avery Helbling, have a nice day.
- Louella Egeland, Staff Member

Comment by Micah

hi everyone I'm attorney aid in Durham with 180 lock Oh in Denver Colorado and you're watching all up in your business in this episode of all up in your business we're going to talk about the steps to take to trademark a name a business name or a product or service name and these steps are also going to apply to trademarking a logo but there are a few little differences if you're doing a logo versus trying to trademark a name but first before we get into it huge announcement coming at you March 4th is brandish DIY your trademark application during this one-hour webinar and mini workshop I'm going to teach you step by step how to prepare for complete and submit a trademark application without a lawyer and registration opens soon so if you want to learn the exact steps to take to file a trademark application without a lawyer check the description below for a link to get on the waitlist and to get some special early bird discount opportunities - all right let's talk about how to trademark a name the first step before you go trade marking anything is make sure it's something that's worth trademarking what makes a name more or less worth trade marking it really depends on how strong or weak it is a weak trademark is one that is more generic or common or descriptive versus a strong trademark which is something that's very arbitrary or very distinctive very creative and so the stronger your trademark is the stronger the trademark registration is going to be so if you have a really weak trademark something that typically makes it weak is if it's very descriptive of your goods or your services or if it's primarily your last name something like that makes a trademark on the weaker side and with a weak trademark if you register it all you have is a registered weak trademark and your trademark rights will ruffle to that if you have a weak generic trademark name your rights to enforce that trademark are gonna be somewhat limited and weaker versus if you have a very arbitrary name that's a stronger trademark then your registered trademark rights are gonna be a lot stronger to a few examples of very strong trademarks are like Google Google wasn't even a word until Google came out and created it so any like brand new word or creating a new word creating a new sound combining words to create something new that's the best thing you can do is create a brand new word or a brand new trademark that no one's ever seen before that's gonna make it stronger versus a weaker trademark so if we've decided that it's worth pursuing a trademark registration the next thing we want to do is make sure it's available to even register and use in the US a good first place to start with searching for your trademark availability is of course Google or your favorite search engine type in the trademark that you're looking to register and see what comes up if there's a bunch of other business listings for similar types of products or services if the exact trademark that you want comes up a lot or if there are a lot of similar variations then that might be a little red flag that maybe this trademark has already taken or if it's not taken necessarily registered if there's a lot of competition with that trademark that's going to affect how strong and distinctive your trademark is so if you're seeing a lot of similar variations of your trademark or identical trademarks then you might want to think about how that will impact your registration and then after doing a Google search you can also do a search on the Whois database to see what kind of domain name registrations already exists that incorporate your trademark or something similar to it and then the USP tío has a really good search database available - this allows you to search for pending trademark applications and registered trademarks that might be identical or similar to yours so if you go to the USPTO s website its uspto.gov and you'll navigate to their tests tes s system and this is where you're gonna do that search and you'll usually be able to do just a basic word search for your name now this is where the difference comes in if you're trying to trademark a logo then you'll want to do a design search which is a bit more complicated than just a basic word search so here you can type in the trademark name that you're wanting to use for this example I'm gonna type in all up in your business and then we'll see what comes up so let's say you were wanting to register your trademark all up in your business for your local ice cream shop we see here there is an active live registration for all up in yo business so what's important to note if you do find trademarks that are identical to yours or kind of similar to yours pay attention also to the goods or services that are associated with that registration there are two things primarily that go into trademark applications and trademark registrations the first is the similarity of the trademark itself the second is the similarity of the goods or services so if I'm opening an ice cream shop called all opinio business this current all up in your business registration is for like legal services and things that have absolutely nothing to do with ice cream or ice cream shops so with this finding I am relatively safe feeling like I can proceed with my application because there aren't any that are so similar in trademark and in the goods and services that it's likely it'll get through but if you do find something in the database that is kind of similar to your trademark and goods or services are somewhat related or if they're identical then again that's a red flag that you're going to want to take into consideration and maybe go back to the drawing board because if someone else already has that trademark registered in a very related category of goods or services that's going to impact how your application goes and whether or not you're going to get that registration you can also use some third-party trademark search tools there are companies out there that will do a very thorough trademark search these aren't lawyers or law offices they're just trademark search companies that will search the USPTO and common-law usage and even international usage and then what they'll do is they'll compile all the information and give you typically this very large report summarizing what they found now if you're not a lawyer and you don't know how to actually interpret and analyze those results it may not do you a whole lot of good to pay for that kind of a search but if you can figure out how to analyze what you're looking at then using one of those services for a pretty extensive search is a good idea but really the best option is to use an attorney to help you with this clearance search because the attorney is gonna not only know what to search for but they're also going to understand what they're looking at and they're gonna know how to analyze that in the context of your trademark and determine what it actually means for the fate of your trademark application so if we've determined we want to file the application and the trademark is available the next step is to start using the trademark now ok

Thanks Micah your participation is very much appreciated
- Louella Egeland

About the author

Louella Egeland

I've studied imperative programming at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and I am an expert in neuroanthropology. I usually feel high. My previous job was transportation systems design engineer I held this position for 20 years, I love talking about croquet and mushroom hunting. Huge fan of Marcus Lemonis I practice rowing and collect sneakers.

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