Trademark

Use A Trademark to Direct Traffic.

Commercial success or failure of a product often is determined by ready identification by the consumer. A trademark is capable of identifying a particular manufacturer or seller's products or services from the products of another.

Trademarks can include words, symbols, logos, slogans, colors, product and packaging shapes, sounds and smells.  However, features of a product that confer a functional or competitive advantage or words or symbols that directly describes the product or underlying category of product cannot serve as a trademark.

Trademark law furthers the goal of ready identification of goods by regulating the proper use of trademarks.  When marks are used to identify services, they are called service marks.

Be Thoughtful in Product Development.

Careful consideration of how a product is packaged and marked during product development is paramount to ensure that opportunities are not overlooked to turn words, logos, slogans, colors, product and packaging shapes, sounds and smells into commercially valuable assets. 

Trademark strategy, thoughtfully coordinated with brand development, can result in trademark rights that provide legal protection of the product features that induce the consumer to purchase one product over another.

Ensure Your Trademark Doesn’t Infringe.

If a party owns the rights to a particular trademark, any subsequent use of another mark that is likely to cause consumer confusion in association with the same or similar goods may constitute trademark infringement. 
 
A poorly developed branding strategy will in the long run be more costly to maintain and protect than the cost of thoughtful identification and clearance of trademarks in advance of commercial use.

Know Other Advantages of Registering Trademarks.

Trademark registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office confers a number of benefits to the registrant in addition to those described above:

• Gives a party the right to use the mark nationwide, even if actual sales are in a limited area
• Constitutes nationwide constructive notice to others the registrant owns the trademark
• Enables the registrant to bring an infringement suit in federal court
• Allows the registrant to potentially recover treble damages, attorneys fees, and other remedies
• After five years, the registered trademark becomes "incontestable"; the exclusive right to use the mark is conclusively established in the registrant.