How to protect your brand name [Real Research]

Last updated : Sept 8, 2022

How do you protect a brand name or brand mark?

A registered trade mark is the best way to protect your name and brand. Helpful Hint: Have good measures in place, such as confidentiality agreements and limiting staff access. to quickly see if your name is available for company name registration, domain name licensing and trade mark registration.

How can I protect my name and logo?

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

How can I protect my logo legally?

If you want to protect your brand identity you have to register a trademark for your company name, logos, and slogans. By using the trademark symbol, you notify other people that products they use are your property. In order to prevent unauthorized use of your mark by third parties, you have to choose a strong one.

Is it worth trademarking a logo?

Trademarks protect words, names, symbols, sounds and colors and distinguish one company's goods and products from another. Trademarking a logo not only protects it from being used by other similar companies, it also protects a company from unknowingly infringing upon an existing logo.

How do you stop someone from using your business name?

Your brand is your company's identity, so it's critical to secure it with a trademark, which prevents someone from improperly using your business name or branding. To get a trademark, you'll need to file an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Should I copyright my business name?

Protect Sales: Registering your business name for a trademark protects your sales by preventing consumer confusion. For example, if another company uses the same or a similar name to yours and sells a similar product, customers might think they're buying from you instead of your competitors.

How do I copyright a name for free?

You can not register a trademark for free. However, you can establish something known as a "common law trademark" for free, simply by opening for business. The benefit of relying on common law trademark rights is that it's free, and you don't need to do any specific work filling out forms, etc.

Should I trademark or copyright 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 register my brand name?

1. Register on the trademark office portal:
2. Trademark search:
3. Filing of trademark application:
4. Examination of trademark application:
5. Show Cause Hearing:
6. Publication of Mark in Trademark Journal:
7. Trademark registration & certification:

How much does trademarking a logo cost?

What Does it Cost to Trademark a Logo? The cost to trademark a logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is $275–$660 as of June 2020, plus legal fees. You can register a trademark with your state for $50-$150, but federal registration offers a great deal more legal protection.

What happens if I don't trademark my logo?

If you do not register your trademark, you will have legal rights only within the geographic areas where you operate. This means you may be able to stop a subsequent user of the mark, even if it is a bigger company, from using the mark in your geographic area only.

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.

Where do I copyright my logo?

All you need to do is register your ownership of your copyright with the Office for United States Copyrighting. You can do this either by sending a document in through the mail or submitting an application online. Typically, and at the time of publication, it costs between $35 and $85 to officially copyright a logo.

Can someone steal my brand name?

Anyone can snatch up a business name and use it for their own business. There's no one uniform database or agency that ensures only one business is using a specific business name. That's how we often see very similar company names that aren't related by franchise or corporate ownership from one state to another.

Can 2 businesses have the same name?

Can Two Companies Have the Same Name? Yes, however, certain requirements must be met in order for it to not constitutes trademark infringement and to determine which party is the rightful owner of the name.

What to do if another company is using your name?

If you discover another business using your name, the most common first step is to send a cease and desist letter to the other business. Keep in mind that there are better and worse ways to write a cease and desist letter, and how you craft the letter will have a large impact on whether the other business complies.

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.

What is copyright vs 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.

What does it cost to copyright a name?

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).

Is my logo automatically copyrighted?

Yes. A logo that includes artistic or design elements, (i.e. not just the name on its own), is legally regarded as being a work of artistic creation and therefore will be protected under copyright law. Copyright protects the logo as an artistic work.

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here the filler marketer is Professor Walters here and today we're here in El Salvador and today we're going to talk about is how you can protect your brand because your brand is very important we have to think about the legal ramifications of our brand name what does that mean how do we protect it and things like that all right now the first things first if you do have a brand you want to make sure you try to trademark that you want to make sure that you have the exclusive right of using that name in a certain situation okay but the thing is it's not just your brand name it could also be your brand logo that you develop it could be the symbols that you use all these kind of things you want to make sure you're legally able to actually do that alright so that's the first step is just kind of checking things out that's why when I talk to companies I'm like look you want to start a brand you wanna start a new product make sure you can get the legal use of that brand name make sure you can get the Twitter feed for that name make sure the Facebook page the website all these kind of things because someone else has already taken that even if it's not in your country that can lead to problems okay so you want to kind of think about those so make sure step one we can legally protect our brand names with trademarks when we want to copyright stuff things like that because the thing is is a lot of people don't realize is if you use overly generic names you could have some problems like oh we want to trademark red well here's the thing red you can have a tough time trademarking red and a lot of people you know five 10 years ago when Taylor Swift came out with Taylor Swift's red like look Taylor Swift got red you know trademark no she didn't she got Taylor Swift's red protected because red is such a broad topic it's really hard to kind of protect that well what about Johnnie Walker the liquor they have Johnnie Walker Black Label you know Johnnie Walker Blue Label yes they have Johnnie Walker Blue Label it's all together it's not just blue okay so you got to realize that overly generic names are really difficult to protect another kind of thing that's kind of difficult to protect is if you're looking at family names or geographic locations so for example Walters hey we've got Walters world we've got professor Walters well if you go to Germany there used to be Walter cigarettes Walters travel agencies there's all kinds of things out there and it's kind of hard to keep people out no no one can trademark the name Walters there's a lot of walters out there imagine if you're the Smith family there's lots and lots of Smith families out there too so you have to think about those things when you're trying to use a name so that's why you want to make sure you put it in there like look it's Walters world traveling culture professor Walters and we have these things on there to make sure we can protect that okay and if you're looking at destinations for example people like to be cool and fashionable just like in Italy and see like oh we're gonna Pat the name Rome well roma Roma come on that city's been around for a few thousand years you can't trademark that these kind of things so what you'll see is you're trying to forget the ways you kind of bring that in you know again Walters world roma the descent for the husky traveler you know whatever but you have to do something out there because just using a name a place you know I like a family name a place location name or or just a generic name it's gonna be really hard to protect because someone else come in and say look I've got Rome water and I've got Rome this and so it makes it more difficult okay that's why companies like haagen-dazs they made up the name because no one else had that we can do that what symbolizes with that it sounds so European so people pay more for our ice cream we see these kind of things out there okay no nothing you would look out for when you're developing your brand name is a lot of times you're like wait can I kind of like piggyback off my competition and the thing is you gotta be careful because if you're too close to your competition's name one people might get confused to just go to your competition anyway or you might lead into some legal problems like there's this old movie called coming to America and there was McDonald's and MacDougall's and we told MacDougall's had one arch and and McDonald's had two arches and you started to see that look that's that's a little shady like that's come on I thought you're really you know pushing the limit there that's why when you have things like the big king at Burger King they're like oh it's just like the Big Mac at McDonald's but Burger King here look it's really close and sometimes what happens is you end up promoting your competition's brand by being so close to it that's why when you see now the dr. pepper versus mr. Pibb you know it's like it's so close and you'll see that some companies actually focus on that so if you ever go to an Aldi or a Walmart of stuff like that and they have they're like Mountain Dew or like mellow yellow or like coke you know the names sometimes kind of fit along with it like oh that's their version of mountain dude that's their version of Dr Pepper now I've got it okay so you have those things so you want to be kind of careful with that and one thing is sometimes your products your brand becomes so successful they become synonymous with it think about it how many of you take a thermos to school to keep your drinks cold or hots how many of you like to go on roller blades and rollerblade around and things like that you have companies that were so successful that their brand name became synonymous with the industry and here's the thing those who went rollerblading as a kid did you actually have a rollerblade brand or did you have some other inline skate companies brand oh I never thought about that yeah and that's why we had to think about how do we protect that so for example in the US you might ask hey do you have a Kleenex for me but what you really want is a tissue Kleenex is the brand name in Germany you ask for a tempo but tempo is a tissue brand name and so you have those kind of things no-nothing you want to watch out for too though is sometimes brands don't translate very well you may think this is perfect this will do very well for example there was a car that came out you know 40 years ago called the Nova the thing is the Nova if you think about what's Innova it's an exploding star oh that's so cool when you see those pictures from NASA and you're like oh wow that is awesome to see you're like yes I want to have this nova thing it looks so cool but do you think the Nova is gonna work very well here in El Salvador where they speak Spanish and no that means doesn't go are you gonna buy a car this car doesn't go are you gonna be buying a sandwich at eight that's called like taste bad of course not and so we have to think about these things make sure kind of works right I know the toilet paper I bought all the time I used to live in Lithuania it was called grit and the let the wings are very proud of

Thanks for your comment Carmina Kader, have a nice day.
- Dylan Comar, Staff Member

hello everyone everyone should own this paper and you know why because it protects your brand in this video i will be showing you step by step on how to trademark your name before we get started first we need to understand that trademarking and copyright are two different things copyright protect things such as books artwork audio books content that you put on the internet whereas trademarking protects things as your logo and your brand okay you get it okay so now that we get that understood please quit saying you're gonna copyright your logo you can't do that you trademark it okay okay so moving right along once you understood understand the difference between copywriting and trademarking the next thing you need to do is think how you want your brand to expand when i say that i mean you might start you might be starting off as a clothing store don't take that back you might be starting off as a um t-shirt company but um let's say right now you own a t-shirt line but later on down the line you might see yourself owning a whole store you need to think about all those things because it can save you money in the long run for example when i first trade market pink lamb i was super positive that the only thing i was going to do was make up once my trademark got registered i then decided that i wanted to do hair both of those fall under the same international code which mean i could have filed both of those on my same application and only paid 225 which in the long run i end up paying that fee twice okay so think about where you see your brand in the future that way it can save you so much money especially if they fall under the same international class secondly what you're going to do you're going to go on google and search your name in so many ways for example today we're going to use to have for you that's going to be the company name that i want to use in this tutorial too hot for you please understand for the two there's four ways you can put that you can put it with the number two you can spell out two you can put t-o-o or you can put t-o however you choose to do it four you can put the number four you can spell out four or you can put f-o-r and clear to you is just either you or y or u you have to mix up that name in so many ways to search to see if anybody has it because you might spell yours you know t-o h-o-t f-o-r-y-u where someone else might be using two the number two and the number four but you searching your name and you don't show anything but the whole time someone else had it but they was filling in a completely different way so you have to play around with the name and the spelling to make sure there's there's no way a person can have your name so like i said you're gonna go on google you're gonna search it as many ways you can so like i said you're gonna go on google you're gonna search it as many ways you can if you see someone have your name go on the website see how long they had it if they actually even using it because here is an example where on facebook somebody was using too high for you and it's a woman boutique but once you go on my facebook page it was nothing with a guy showing off his body we're gonna not pay any money today and we're gonna go right right along as if we never saw it because technically they're not promoting clothing so it won't stop you after you do that what you're going to do is go on social media too high for you see if anybody using that handle see if anybody put more on clothes than using that handle once you see that no one is using it you're going to go on facebook you know again on social media instagram facebook every social media outlet there is and see if anybody using their name as far as promoting their brand or using it as a brand name once you realize that no one is using it then you what you're going to do is you're going to go to uspto do not try your you can because it's cheaper but i prefer you not to use um the state's website to trademark your name because it's only going to protect you in your state which means the other 49 states are up for grabs so the best thing to do is use uspto and register it cough up that 225 because it's going to help you in the long run it's going to save you so much money it's going to help your brand because what you don't want to do is spend all this money building a brand just to find out someone else owns it okay and actually in tennessee llc is work worth what three hundred dollars so technically trademarking your name is way less expensive so once you do that you're going to go to um uspto right now they have it to where you have to create an account once you create that account um that's where you can do the application uh with me i use the t the t-e-a-s plus um application which is 25 and i said 25 i wish it is 225 per class of good and service i don't use the standard because it's not cheap cheaper that's 50 dollars more and i think it requires more but i know i use the um tea cheese plug they had three but i'm looking here now and i'm only seeing two so obviously they got rid of one because i know it was like 225 then it was 275 and then i think it was 325. they removed the 325 so now you only have to choose between the standard and the plus i will say use the plus because it's cheaper and you're agreeing to communicate with them strictly online you're not going to get no paperwork so if you're not the type of person who check your mail on time or you're not using your real address do not go that route because they do give you deadlines and if you don't meet those deadlines you pretty much lost your application so i'm going to take you through the steps on how to trademark okay once like i said once you log in you're going to select t's plus it's 225 per class of goods and service okay goods and service is what your business is a description of it so by me being pink glam i am a hair stylist that's the class of service um i own a beauty bar i can found that um i do makeup so there's many things that i can put up under here i will show y'all later on in this video so once you do that it's going to ask you is an attorney following this application you're going to say no because why we got this we can do this ourself so you're going to say no and you're going to click continue the third question you can just skip click continue and it's going to ask you the owner of the mark whatever your business is registered under that's what you're going to use so if you're a sole prior ship you're going to use your name but if you're llc of course you're going to use your llc or your corporation or whatever business name that you use however the owner of the mark you can say if you're sold partially let's say for me example which i am going to put in this tab chancellor owens flash dugan but i'm going to say doing business ads uh too high for you the entity type in this case is going to be individual but like i said if you're a corporation or llc a partnership a limited partnership or joint venture you're going to select what's best for your business so once you select that then you're going to put in your personal information it's asking you fo

Thanks Catharine your participation is very much appreciated
- Dylan Comar

About the author

Dylan Comar

I've studied federal law at Conway School of Landscape Design in Northampton and I am an expert in atmospheric electricity. I usually feel surprised. My previous job was hand sewer I held this position for 9 years, I love talking about martial arts and ultimate frisbee. Huge fan of Jimmy Fallon I practice laser tag and collect postmarks.