Why trademark your business name [Explained]

Last updated : Aug 18, 2022

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Is it worth trademarking a 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.

Should I copyright or trademark my business name?

A trademark can protect your name and logo in case someone else wants to use them for their own purposes. Also, you cannot really copyright a name, since copyright protects artistic works. This is exactly why you need to have a trademark that protects your company's intellectual property, such as your logo.

Is it better to get an LLC or trademark?

It is better to form an LLC before filing a trademark application. So, before you submit a trademark application, you should create an LLC or other business entity. A business should form an LLC before applying for a trademark because the LLC will own the trademark.

What happens if I don't trademark my business?

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.

Why should I get a trademark?

Trademarking is an important step for protecting your brand identity. It will stop competitors from poaching your customers by imitating your brand. It can also offer you some protection if those copycats do something reputation-damaging.

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.

Should I trademark my business logo?

Anyone whose logo identifies a business or profession should seriously consider trademark protection. Once you establish your trademark, the legal mark lasts forever. Just make sure to keep up with registration renewals at the five and ten year marks.

How do I protect my business name?

Trademark. A trademark can protect the name of your business, goods, and services at a national level. Trademarks prevent others in the same (or similar) industry in the United States from using your trademarked names.

Can I trademark a name before starting a business?

In many cases, a business will want to start the trademark application as soon as their LLC or corporation paperwork is filed. By filing for a trademark prior to launch, you can be sure that your name is protected once you begin commercial sales. However, there may be an even stronger reason to apply early.

How hard is it to trademark a business name?

Registering a trademark is a fairly straightforward process that you can complete in just a few easy steps. This guide will walk you through each step needed to register and trademark your brand name, and answer some frequently asked questions about registering your trademark.

Can I sell a product without a trademark?

You can sell products or offer services in the United States without having a registered trademark.

Can I trademark a name already in use but not trademarked?

1. Can You File for a Trademark That Exists? Updated November 12, 2020: If you're wondering, "can you trademark something that already exists," the simple answer is "no." Generally speaking, if somebody has used a trademark before you, you can't register the trademark for yourself.

Do I really need to register a trademark?

Trade marks are important as they help distinguish your brand from others. This ensures your goods and services stand out from your competitors. You do not need a company to register a trade mark. However, there are benefits to registering a trade mark under a company name where the company exists.

What are the three types of trademarks?

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

What can I do with a trademark?

A trademark protects a good or service offered by a company from infringement or damage of reputation by another company. With a trademark, you have legal recourse to sue another company that uses your likeness to further their own business ventures. This includes both registered and unregistered trademarks.

How much is a trademark?

No matter how you file, you will pay a minimum of $250 to apply for a Federal trademark. But considering the importance of your trademark, and the potential complexities you face when filing, it's not a bad idea to use a lawyer or filing service.

Do you pay taxes on a trademark?

Report your profit from the sale of the trademark on your income taxes. You cannot deduct the cost of creating your trademark, but you can apply it to your formulation of the "income tax basis", which is the reference point for determining tax liability upon sale and depreciation deductions.

Can you trademark a single word?

A trademark registration with the USPTO is a registered trademark and gets marked with the registered trademark (Â®) symbol. You don't have to register a word with the USPTO to get trademark status. A word is a trademark if that word identifies a brand, regardless of whether the word itself is registered.

What are examples of trademark?

Under ArmourÂ®
TwitterÂ®
It's finger lickin' good! Â®
Just do itÂ®
America runs on Dunkin'Â®

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Comment by Bonny Zakes

question the day here today when should you trademark your business name or your logo or your brand I'm gonna tell you just a second hey my name is Jim Hart I'm the founding attorney here at Hawthorn law and you might be wondering gem why are you sitting on the floor in front of this couch with the lighting that's awful to be perfectly honest it's because I'm in our land over them at the airport and I made this stupid terrible mistake if you've ever been to the Orlando Airport they have this atrium and you can either get a room that overlooks the atrium or you get a room that overlooks the runway typically I get a room that overlooks the runway they didn't have any available I flew in early this morning I needed a nap I just I was like I need a room fit the bullet I got this room but the lighting is not nearly as good as what I'm used to in the other room check out some my older videos and you'll see how much better the lighting is in those rooms anyway not that you really care you want to know when to trademark your logo or brand hold on a second I was talking to a client yesterday I did a I've still got some spots available for next week but I opened up a consult I greatly reduced my rate from $350 an hour to $200 an hour for a limited time to open up some half-hour slots between now and Christmas so you can get a consult with me if you need to consult for $97 I'll link to the link up here to get more information on that but anyway I was having a consult with somebody who took advantage of this offer earlier this week and one of the questions we were talking about was when they should trademark their brand or their logo or whatever this is a great question the appropriate legal answer is that you should trademark your brand name as soon as you possibly can that's not always practical there's some people that that for whatever reason because the money is tight or whatever they can't do it right away but if you've got a really good idea for a brand and you want to make sure nobody else starts stealing your intellectual property you need to get that trademark as soon as possible get that puppy trademark so that would be my official legal recommendation is to anyone who asks you need to get it done as soon as possible now there's there's a couple ways that you can go about trademarking a brand especially when you're just starting out the first way is if you're actually using it to sell products or services then you can just go ahead and file a trademark application to get a trademark immediately if you're not yet using it to sell products or services but maybe you've got it on your website and you're just kind of starting to build up a business but you haven't actually used it to sell anything yet and you've got a great idea you want to make sure nobody steals it then you can file what's called a notice of use trademark application which is it's it's the same application you just check a different box in the application and basically what happens is you go through the same process then you're given a period of time where you can start using the trademark because the trademark doesn't actually provide you any protection unless you're selling a good or service and so what you get is you get you get extra time to start selling your good or service your goods or services maybe that's a better way to say that anyway you get extra time and then if within that period of time you can either file for an extension or if you start using your trademark you file a notice that you've started using the trademark and then the trademark will register and then you're good to go from there but if not then you get an extension and you've got a couple extensions so in all I'll told you can get a couple of years to basically start using that trademark and if you don't start using the trademark then you can just abandon the application and it goes back out there into the the world is anybody else care plan for that trademark if they wanted to my advice to you is if you're looking to build a business or a brand that you really want to grow and you think that you've got a really great name that that you want to protect then you want to trademark that brand or name as soon as possible I think a great example of this was and I forget her name the woman who created Spanx she didn't tell anybody about her brand for a year for at least a year there was an interview I heard where she was talking about this I'll try and link up down below to the interview with this woman it was on a podcast and she talked about how she went through methodical steps to do everything she could to protect the brand Spanx through she filing her patent application getting the process patented and her trademark and everything else as soon as she possibly could without telling anyone about what she was doing and then when a time came for her to start selling she had it all in place that's a great example of why you need to do it early because she had a great name a great concept and she wanted to make sure it was protected I'll do another a video on all the different reasons why you should trademark your brand but I just wanted to do this video to answer those questions for those of you out that are wondering when you should do it how soon you should do it if you want to do the trademark application yourself I don't recommend it but you can do it yourself if you've got a good name that's easily too tricky I just can't talk today if you've got a good name that's easy to trademark you can probably do it for the cost of the filing fee which is around three hundred dollars if you really want some legal guidance and you want to do a search and you want to figure out if anyone else is using this trademark and you want some help doing all that you've got two choices you can either hire an attorney which this is something that we do to do this for you or you can join our DIY legal program I'll include a link up here where we do a tutorial on how to trademark your brand and how to come up with a good name and all those type of things and that's something that we're going to include in that program so so there are other ways to do it they're a little bit less expensive anyway that's it for today I hope you're having a great day I also have a free training I'm gonna link up up here if you want to watch a replay of the webinar that I did several months ago that has gotten a lot of positive reviews you can go ahead and do that that's it for today folks have a great day don't forget give us a thumbs up comment below if you've got a question you know just type trademark and let me know that you're listening that you understand what I'm saying or if you just have a comment that you want leave a comment below and ask a question that's fine we'll use that for future videos we do not answer illegal questions in YouTube comments that is a big no-no don't forget to subscribe yeah that's down here and hit the little Bell thingy and can get notified whenever we post new videos we're posting videos about once a week going forward for my DIY members I'm looking to do a Q&A call every Friday for them I don't th

Thanks for your comment Bonny Zakes, have a nice day.
- Ronald Nietzer, Staff Member

Comment by Latasha

hey there folks Jim Hart back out you hear from Hawthorn lawn today I want to talk to you about seven kind of seven reasons that you should trademark your brand or business name or logo or whatever it might be all right so it's been a couple weeks since I've been talking to you and a couple weeks ago I talked to you about when you should do a trademark for your business or a brand so today I want to talk to you about why you should do a trademark for your business or brand no do not drink a carbonated beverage before you do one of these discussions because you just start belching up the whole time of that alright so seven reasons you need to trademark your brand name or business let's start with number one it protects your brand if you trademark your brand or your business name or your logo or whatever it might be it protects your brand from competitors coming in and trying to steal your brand or trying to make counterfeit goods or do things like that so it's a very inexpensive way to protect your business in the event that somebody tries to copy what you're doing so that's number one the best reason to do it and that's why most people do it and that's what most people think about when they think trademark they think okay I'm doing something to protect my business and that's really the name of the game here folks is you're trying to protect your business from somebody coming in and copycatting your brand or your logo or something like that that's number one reason number two reason that you want to trademark your business or brand is isn't extremely excuse me it is an extremely inexpensive way to invest in your business for filing fees as low as $275 you basically can register your trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office that's just I mean now if you don't want to do it yourself you can pay an attorney to do it and that's usually gonna cost you another one to two thousand dollars depending on choose to use that's an extremely inexpensive investment into your business the third reason you want to trademark your brand is that once its trademark you can use that little are simple with the the circle around it hold on a second here's the one I'm talking about it's 70 cents you've seen those around now once you do that if you see that on a trademark or a logo or a brand name or something else in the out in the general public there's a company that owns that registered trademark and they have actually filed for and received protection with the United States Patent and Trademark Office that's another main reason you want to do it it gives your brand a little bit of legitimacy knowing that it's trademarked so that nobody's going to come in and I mean they know right away that brand is protected I don't want to mess with it so here's a great one that a lot of people don't know number four it's that if you are doing some sort of e-commerce business specifically maybe even selling on Amazon if you register your trademark for your brand you can file that trademark with US Customs and Border Patrol order protection they can actually block goods from coming into the United States that would be infringing on your trademark or that might be counterfeit goods for your brand so that is a huge benefit to registering your trademark specifically if you're doing aim to have an e-commerce business and you're worried about copycat sellers that is a main reason to do it number five this is also a great one these are I mean let's be honest these are all great reasons to trip to register your trademark but it really increases the value of your brand and this is just a little too bright for me all right that's a little better I think I was starting to see a halo and I'm probably still seeing a little bit of a halo hopefully I'm not blinded by this these lights so if you decide that someday you want to sell your brand by registering the trademarks your brand that's going to greatly enhance the value of your brand in that you want to sell because a lot of times for some people for somebody's coming in to buy your business the value of the business is in the brand that you own and the fact that you have that brand as a registered trademark that isn't a tremendous value to some companies and they will actually put a premium on the price they will pay you just because you have registered that brand that's a really easy way to increase the value of your brand for your logo or something like that is by registering the trademark but specifically if you're looking to sell your business at some point in the future and along those same lines I will tell you I've heard from other people that are that are people that would want to sell their business that when a buyer comes in part of their due diligence is seeing whether or not the brand is trademark if it is not trademarked they want to see that the brand gets trademarked before they're willing to buy so we're gonna actually delay your sale if a seller comes in and they want to make sure your brand is trading month before and the reason they do that you see they don't want to buy your brand if you can't trademark your brand the intellectual property is where all the value comes from make sense sixth reason that you want to register your trademark is once you've done so you can go ahead and sue somebody that some fringes on your brand in federal court I know that doesn't seem like a big deal but it is a big deal because some of these lawsuits can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars because you're allowed to get trouble damages and attorneys fees that means three times damages and attorneys fees so that would be another main reason you want to make sure that your your brand is trademarked and the last reason we've got today is that by registering your brand it's gonna prevent somebody else from coming in and registering a brand that might be confusingly similar to you because what can happen is if somebody comes in and they see your brand is doing really well and they want to register something that's similar but now that you the same the US Patent and Trademark Office will do a search and they still may decline registration of that brand that might be confusingly similar to yours so that is another really important reason why you want to make sure your brand is trademarked because if it's not and you're Sol and you know what that means alright so there you go seven seven reasons why you might want to register your trademark hopefully you found this helpful if you did please give us a big thumbs up don't forget to comment below and click the link to subscribe over here we'll see you again next time hopefully you're having a great day a great holiday season I'm looking forward to what 2019 has in store for you and for your business and we will talk again very soon take care folks peace out bye bye

Thanks Latasha your participation is very much appreciated
- Ronald Nietzer

About the author

Ronald Nietzer

I've studied molecular anthropology at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte and I am an expert in anatomy. I usually feel bittersweet. My previous job was chemical equipment operator I held this position for 16 years, I love talking about stamp collecting and bushcraft. Huge fan of Rosa Parks I practice high bar and collect premiums.

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