By Lerae Funderburg

Have you ever wondered if you need to have a federally registered trademark to protect your brand? If you are a business owner or a brand, more than likely you do.

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs that identify and distinguish (“mark”) the source of goods or services of one party from those of others. As a brand, you may want to trademark your name or the design or symbol associated with your name. As a business owner, you may want to trademark your business name, corresponding logo or the slogan associated with your product or service.

And the sooner you trademark, the better. It would hurt to spend years creating and developing your brand under the same name, just to have someone else beat you to the registration punch. It’s not easy to rebrand yourself once you’ve established a fan base of people who are used to knowing you by a certain name. And you certainly don’t want to be confused with another brand. Once you’ve worked to create in the eyes of the public a correlation between your product or service and a certain mark, it would be a shame to have to rebrand your business and rebuild that same trust and confidence you’d previously built with your consumers.

While federal trademark registration is not required, it does offer notable benefits, namely:

1. It provides public notice of claims of ownership of the mark in association with your goods or services;
2. It creates certain presumptions of ownership;
3. It validates the mark and grants the exclusive right to use the mark in connection with the associated goods or services;
4. Registrants can sue in federal court for infringement for marks that are confusingly similar; and,
5. Registrants may prevent importation of goods that bear an infringing mark.

Trademarks are a vital component in protecting your brand and business, That’s why we are hosting a workshop on May 11, 2019, to teach creative entrepreneurs how to register their own trademarks with the assistance of a trademark attorney.

In this workshop, you will learn:

1. the importance of trademarks and the difference between common law trademarks and federally protected trademarks;
2. how to register your specific trademark (so come equipped with your logo, slogan, or brand name and the goods and services you will associate with your mark); and,
3. how to maintain your trademark rights moving forward.
4. how celebrities like Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian have used trademarks to protect their children’s names.

Limited seats are available. Sign up today!

This article originally appeared in Rollingout.com. 

Lerae Funderburg

Posts by Lerae Funderburg