How to put a trademark on a logo [Expert Guide]



Last updated : Aug 15, 2022
Written by : Kym Taper
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How to put a trademark on a logo

How do I add a trademark to a logo?

Where Do You Put Your Trademark Symbol? The most common placement of these symbols is at the bottom right or the top right of the logo. While you want these to be clear enough to serve their purpose, they should also not be too large so as to distract the viewer from your actual logo.

Can I just put TM on my logo?

Anyone can use the TM symbol without legal repercussions. But the R symbol is only for marks that have trademark protection from the USPTO. It may also be a mistake to not use either the TM or R symbol on your mark. Without the TM symbol, your competitors won't know for sure that you're planning to register the mark.

When can I use TM on my logo?

TM stands for trademark. The TM symbol (often seen in superscript like this: TM) is usually used in connection with an unregistered mark—a term, slogan, logo, or other indicator—to provide notice to potential infringers that common law rights in the mark are claimed.

How much does it cost to trademark my logo?

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.

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.

Can I use TM for free?

You can get this for your brand by registering at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Anyone can use a TM symbol regardless of whether they've successfully registered the trademark, or whether they've applied for a trademark at all.

Can you put TM after anything?

You can claim a trademark on anything by using the TM Symbol, but you can't use the registered trademark symbol (R) unless you have registered the trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Here's a link to InterNACHI's Policy on Logo Designs for Members.

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.

How can I protect my 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 do I trademark a name and logo 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 do you get something trademarked?

To register a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you will need to fill out and submit a trademark application. You can do this online, using the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS), an online trademark filing service, or you can submit a paper application.

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.

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.

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.

Do I need to register my logo?

In the U.S., you don't need to register a trademark or copyright your company's logo. Once you put down the original work on paper or digital media and use it to market your business, you automatically own the rights. However, registering a trademark affords you an extra layer of protection.

Can I just put a copyright symbol on my work?

You can place the copyright symbol on any original piece of work you have created. The normal format would be to include alongside the copyright symbol the year of first publication and the name of the copyright holder, however there are no particular legal requirements regarding this.

How do I put TM next to my name?

  1. Copy © or ™ from this page and then paste the copyright or trademark sybmol into your document;
  2. Press and hold ALT+0153 for the tm symbol ™ or ALT+0169 for the copyright symbol c ©.

What are the three types of trademarks?

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

Can you lose a trademark if you don't protect it?

If you don't enforce your trademark, you risk losing reputation, business, sales, customers, and more to the infringer. There's also a concept in trademark law called abandonment. Generally, if you don't use your mark for three years or more, it's considered abandoned.

How much does it cost to file a trademark for a phrase?

If you have ever asked yourself how much does it cost to trademark a phrase, according to the current fee schedule on the USPTO, trademark registration fees cost $275 per mark per class. If you need an attorney's assistance, the cost averages around $1,000 to $2,000.


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How to put a trademark on a logo


Comment by Lavern Casas

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 tA-o 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 for your comment Lavern Casas, have a nice day.
- Kym Taper, Staff Member


Comment by apeebargemonw

he Forks today we're going to be talking about trademarking and specifically trademark symbols it sounds like it's going to be a bit boring well you could be right there but this is important you should know about trademarking when it comes to your brand and your logo so let's make a star and let me take you through each of the three main symbols so the first is the TM symbol sometimes known as the common law mark the TM symbol is used to make people aware that you are claiming rights on your trademark unlike a registered trademark which we'll discuss later on in this video a common law trademark can be harder to protect and that's because there's no public record of when the trademark was first used next up is the SM symbol now this isn't as commonly used as the TM symbol but it stands for service mark so if your brand offers services such as banking or legal or even design services you should be using the SM mark the TM symbol is much more widely recognized though and so I would suggest that you use the TM symbol over and above the SM one next up is the R symbol unlike the previous two symbols the TM and the SM the R represents an officially registered trademark you may only use the R symbol if you have registered your brand or your logo with an official trademark body if you go ahead and use the R symbol with unofficially trademarking then you could run into claims of fraud where you knowingly or willingly attempt to deceive or mislead consumers or try to prevent another brand from registering a mark which is similar or the same as your own if you have the budget to do so I would always say go ahead and officially register your trademark so what about when it comes to actually using the symbols on your logo worship the goal well in the mean peep we'll put the logo in the upper right-hand corner next to the logo it can also go in the lower right-hand corner or it could go inline with your logo or brand name there is no right or wrong it can actually go anywhere around your logo but you do want to have it in a sort of an unobtrusive way if you know for a fact that when you're having your logo designed you will be officially registering it let your designer know because they'll then be able to take that into account when you're creating the logo design so that the TM or the registered trademark symbol will be more balanced in the design okay so a quick recap you don't have to be using the TM or SM symbols to make common law rights claims to your trademark when it comes to the registered trademark symbol that little R in a circle you must have an officially registered trademark to use it and lastly let your designer know if registering that trademark is something you intend to do because they'll then be able to take that into account when they're sketching conceptualizing and create the final little design by knowing in advance they'll be able to incorporate that little symbol into your logo to give an overall better balanced and visual look to the final design it's at this point I should stress that trademark law is very complex you should always seek the advice of a trademark lawyer who can take you through the process and make sure that nothing is missed you don't want to go ahead and register your trademark and make a mistake so that someone challenges it you end up losing so there you have it that's a little bit more information for you on trade marking symbols not the most exciting of topics I know but it is something that you should know when it comes to branding I hope you find this video useful if you have make sure you give the video a thumbs up please leave me a comment let me know if you've actually been through the trade marking process yourself if you haven't already so scrape to the channel and make sure you click on that little bear icon to be notified whenever I release a new video and until I see you next time stay creative folks [Applause]


Thanks apeebargemonw your participation is very much appreciated
- Kym Taper


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