Register Your Trademark In The United States

If you have a trademark you wish to guard, it is time to get your trademark registration done. Before you file for trademark protection you will need to ensure your mark can be registered. That means looking for others who might have registered a similar mark already and evaluating whether your mark meets the other necessities for registration with the USPTO.

Prepare the Trademark Application

It is usually wise to submit an application for registration on the Principal Register of the USPTO. The Principal Register offers the trademark owner the maximum protection, including a supposition that the trademark is legal; the registrant possesses the mark; and the registrant has the special right to use the mark. But, to meet the criteria for registration on the Principal Register, your mark must meet definite requirements, so be sure to do your homework on this or check with with a legal representative before you apply.

The Fundamentals For Filing

Your trademark registrationservice application must be based on in commerce or intent to use in the future. A use-based application indicates that, at the time of the application, you have been using the mark in commerce already or in association with the services and goods you list in the application. It is worth mentioning that your use of the mark cannot have been only for the reason of reserving trademark rights, but rather should have been done in the usual course of trade. If your use-based application is acknowledged, you will have registered your mark successfully.

Intent to use application indicates that at the time of the application, you have not yet utilized the mark but have a definite intent to do so in the future. If your intent to use application is acknowledged, the USPTO will publish the Notice of Allowance. At that point, to register your mark successfully, you will need to file evidence showing that you have used the mark in commerce or in association with the goods and services listed in your application.

Assuming that your application is accepted by the examining attorney, it will then be published in the Official Gazette USPTO, an online publication, for a month. During this period of time, any party might oppose registration of the mark if it believes it would be damaged by it being registered. If any opposition is filed, then there is a court-like proceeding to solve the disagreement.

If, in contrast, no opposition is filed, then the USPTO will register the mark and publish you a certificate of registration, so long as you submitted a use-based application. Remember that it may take quite a few months after the publication period is over for registration to publish. If you submitted intent to use application, then the USPTO will publish a Notice of Allowance, which necessitates you to take an extra step of submitting evidence of utilization of the mark in commerce.

Trademarks are defensive in nature which means that the protection offered by online trademark registration only applies to the country where the trademark is registered. In future, under a new US trademark rule foreign-domiciled applicants needs to appoint a US-licensed attorney.