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One of my entrepreneur friends recently asked me if he “had to” register the logo for his company. I responded with, “How much would it suck if you had to rebrand?”
Why Register your Trademark
Your trademark is the name, logo, and other branding you put on your products so consumers can tell the difference between your brand and your competition’s. When you have a registered trademark for your brand, you can stop anyone from entering the market with a similar brand on a similar product as you. The law doesn’t like it when your competition tries to ride your coattails by looking too similar to your brand. When you register your trademark, your rights extend to everywhere in the United States, even if you’re not doing business everywhere in the country yet.
If you don’t register your brand, you can only get “common law” trademark rights that are limited to where you’re doing business with your mark. Your competition can use the same or similar brand where you haven’t established yourself. And if they register the brand before you, you may find yourself frozen only to your established marketplace, which may be quite small. Just ask the original Burger King restaurant what that’s like.
Cheaper than Rebranding
What does it cost to have a logo designed?
What about a website?
The fee to submit a trademark application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is $225-400, if it’s only for one type of product or service. Even with the fee to have a proper trademark lawyer submit and track the application, it’s often cheaper to apply for a registered trademark instead of rebrand. If someone else registers your trademark before you, you may be forced to rebrand if you want to continue to grow your business and expand your marketplace to reach more potential customers.
Brand Theft Happens
I have seen and worked on a number of situations where a company could have avoided a lot of heartache and legal bills if they had registered their trademark, because their competition registered the same or similar trademark before they did. Turner Barr essentially had his trademark, Around the World in 80 Jobs, stolen out from under him. He had to cease operations to address the situation. Thankfully for him, his story had a happy ending. Other companies are not as lucky.
A substantial portion of my work involves analyzing, registering, and challenging trademarks. If you need help with your trademark situation, you can contact me directly. I also post about these issues on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. You can also get access to more exclusive content that is available only to people on my mailing list, by subscribing here.