Do I Need a Trademark Attorney?
An essential part of being a business owner is establishing the brand of your business. Having a unique trade name and logo can differentiate your product or service in the market and helps build consumer recognition and reliability. Given the value of a company’s brand, it’s important to ensure that your brand is protected from others using the same name or likeness for their own use. This is especially true in the social media age of today, where a business’s intellectual property is publicized and accessible to other individuals. The most important step in brand protection is having a registered attorney trademark for your business. This ensures nationwide protection, where no one can use a similar, not only identical, name or logo as you in the same goods or service industry, and can be obtained through a trademark law attorney. A trademark attorney specializes in brand protection and will assist you in registering your mark.
How Do I Find One?
Shopping around for the best trademark attorney can be a difficult and timely task, given that there are so many options to choose from. The trademark registration process can be a lengthy one, and you want to ensure that you are matched with the right professional who understands the needs of your business and your brand.
The best place to start pursuing an attorney trademark is to ask other business owners who have already registered their mark for a referral. With referrals, you can verify the attorney’s reputation from someone with first-hand experience, as well as understand the range of costs associated with the services you are seeking.
Attorneys in other practice fields are also great referral sources. Even though the practice area may differ, the legal community is very connected, and they can refer you to someone in a specific practice area.
Another way to find a trademark attorney is through social media. Most attorneys are present on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, where you can learn more about their company and their client base. This will help you prepare for an initial meeting with a lawyer from their firm. Legal search engines are also useful resources, where you can find a directory of attorneys, filtered by practice area, such as Lawrina. You can browse through the professional bio of each trademark attorney without resorting to each firm’s website to find the best fit for you.
Myths About Trademarks and Things To Avoid:
Acquiring a trademark for your brand is an essential and intentional process. This is why it is best for you to employ the services of a trademark attorney to help you through it. A certainty is that you would be getting commensurate value for your money and effort, as there are several ways a trademark law attorney can assist with your trademark registration. Some of them will be discussed in this section.
To begin with, a trademark attorney can offer you some much-needed legal advice ahead of your application. Commencing your trademark registration is often new legal territory for most. As such, it is vital to have a professional show you the ropes before you dive in at all. That way, you already have an idea of what you may need and how to go about it beforehand. Moreover, the council does not end there. The attorney would also be on hand to offer legal advice during the process to ensure everything is done as and when due.
Also, an attorney trademark makes it possible for you to ascertain and eliminate confusion between your brand and other existing trademarks. The attorney can do this by conducting a trademark search and advising you appropriately. This helps to reduce the risk of a refusal of your filing by the USPTO or a potential trademark infringement lawsuit.
Furthermore, engaging a trademark attorney for your registration process can function as a preemptive measure for all possible outcomes. In the event of a refusal, your filing process may still continue. You can file a request for a review to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board if you believe your mark was unduly refused. Your attorney may assist you with the response to the Board, as well as other subsequent correspondence.
Moreover, you might be filing a trademark that goes beyond American jurisdiction. That means you would have to file a foreign trademark as well, which operates differently from what obtains in the US. As such, engaging the services of a trademark attorney in the US would procure assistance with the know-how of filing a foreign trademark.
Conclusion
As a business owner, the importance of your trademark registration can never be overemphasized. It can make or break your seamless operations. A trademark can only come good if the registration process does. Your key to ensuring that is by engaging the services of the best trademark attorney you can find. There are several ways for you to find a qualified trademark attorney near you. And the benefits are as many as you could possibly imagine, as a variety of legal issues could arise during your registration. In that case, nothing beats having ready professional insights on hand to enhance your chances.
