Day 20: Trademarks

You’ve got the catchy name and clever logo. Now you’re thinking you need to protect your precious brand by registering it with the U.S. Patent Office. Maybe, maybe not.

As business owners, we considered the possibility that we may need to register our trade/service marks. It seems particularly necessary with ICANN‘s tendency to ignore prior use in favor of trademark status when deciding domain name disputes. After visiting the patent office’s site, however, we decided formal registration was not necessary for us at this time. Instead, we will simply add the ™ or SM where appropriate.

Formal registration is expensive, and really only necessary if you are marketing nationwide. And, the longer we use the names, the better claim we have to them, regardless of the trademark status.

That’s all for tonight. Angela is busy at work on something fun for tomorrow, so you shouldn’t let today’s boring entry keep you from coming back.