Is It Important To Use A Registered Trademark For Your Franchise Business?

This is a common concern when starting a franchise business of a popular brand. Even for a franchise business, it is important to protect intellectual property. In this competitive market, trademarks play a vital role. With the help of trademarks, customers will identify goods and services that your company caters to. Also, this is a means to stand out among the rest and maintain your identity in the market. These are equally applicable in opening a franchise business as required to look after its reputation. Even the business name of a franchise should be protected, and it should not be used by third parties.

Understanding trademark before applying it in a franchise system

Either a brand name or a business name can be a trademark. So, you have to follow a few considerations when choosing trademark names. It can be a word, name or a logo. It should be such that customers get to know about the kind of goods that the business caters to. So, these trademarks are also required in a franchise system to protect the names. This can prevent unfair competition and misuse by third parties.

Can the franchise business be trademarked?

It should be known that every franchise business can be trademarked. Even after using the brand name in running the franchise business, it may not be protectable by means of using registered trademarks. Also, descriptive names are not suitable for trademarking. However, in this regard, for further assistance, you can visit Trademarks411.com site to grasp better idea into trademarking of a franchise business. In case of a common trademark name, you are unable to protect it under trademark laws.

But suggestive trademarks that hint about service or goods sold are often trademarked. Here again, there is a risk of the trademark laws to reject the same as being descriptive instead of suggestive.

However, the highest level of protection even in a franchise business is given to the out-of-the-box trademark names as these products have are not connected with franchise system products. When some two very uncommon words from two different genres are used, these are trademarked.  You are sure to get several instances of it when you go through the Trademarks411.com site.

What is the necessity of registering for franchise system trademarks?

Though trademark registration should not be considered as mandatory, registration of franchise trademark helps you exercise legal right on franchise system name. To get nationwide rights, you should have trademarked registered with USPTO or United States Patent and Trademark Office. This way, you can prevent any other company or person from using your franchise system name.

However, to ensure that your trademark rights are well protected, you should hire an attorney. The attorney can help you with the trademark registration procedure. If a franchise catering to similar items is already operating in the same area as that of yours, you should get a trademark registered. This will help you deal with any kind of infringement problems in the long run.