What are trademarks?
According to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a trademark “can be any word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination of these things that identifies your goods or services. It’s how customers recognize you in the marketplace and distinguish you from your competitors.”
The most common protections that trademarks offer are for a word, phrase or logo. However, they can also protect the look of a building (think McDonald’s), a sound (MGM’s roaring lion) or a color (that beautiful, telling Tiffany’s blue).
While the trademark “™” is a highly-recognized symbol of intellectual property rights, it refers only to the protection of a source of goods. Others include the Service Mark “SM”, which indicates a provider of services, like daycare, for example. Finally, a trade dress is a set of distinctive, non-functional features that distinguish one company’s goods and services from another; features like the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle.
Why are trademarks important?
It’s important to protect a business' intellectual property with trademarks, but why? First, consumer protection. Consumers of a trademarked company can be assured that the quality of goods and/or services is what the company says it is. For example, without trademark law, 100 different companies could use the name “Cheerios” on their cereal. How would you know you were getting the cereal made by General Mills?
Second, trademarks allow and incentivize companies to generate goodwill, which benefits their consumers. Adding to the Cheerios example above, consider this: Without trademark protection, why would General Mills have the incentive to maintain the quality of Cheerios? No one would know they were buying General Mills' cereal unless only General Mills could use the Cheerios name.
What can be trademarked?
Understandably, a common question for startups is “Is X trademarkable?” Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer. Whether “X” is trademarkable depends on the goods/services for which the mark will be used.
A better question to ask is, “Is X trademarkable in connection with ABC goods or services?” For the answer to be in the affirmative, two conditions must be satisfied: No one else can have priority, and the mark must be sufficiently distinctive. Here, priority means that the earlier owner of a mark can prohibit later users from using the mark in confusingly similar ways.
Securing trademark protection
In the United States, getting trademark protection is as simple as using the mark in commerce. You don’t even have to register it. But consider it.
While you can register a trademark in a specific state, startups should register trademarks with the federal USPTO, which protects your company’s marks throughout the United States.
Securing trademark protection
In the United States, getting trademark protection is as simple as using the mark in commerce. You don’t even have to register it. But consider it.
While you can register a trademark in a specific state, startups should register trademarks with the federal USPTO, which protects your company’s marks throughout the United States.
Securing trademark protection
In the United States, getting trademark protection is as simple as using the mark in commerce. You don’t even have to register it. But consider it.
While you can register a trademark in a specific state, startups should register trademarks with the federal USPTO, which protects your company’s marks throughout the United States.
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