Trademarking

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR GOOD NAME
Registering your Trademark--A dry subject that can cost you big time if you neglect it.

Are you one of these people who knows you should register your product or service’s name, brand or slogan, but haven’t gotten around to it? Do it today! It’s scary, because you’re afraid you’ll discover it’s registered by another. But do it anyway. You can spend some money now or a lot more later.

During our recent seminar on Registering Your Trademark, two of our people discovered that their company names were registered trademarks of other companies elsewhere in the country. Others found that their company slogan or tagline was owned by someone else. Very upsetting! Very expensive!

Sandy Shepard, the attorney who helped me register “Grow Your Business without Driving Yourself Crazy™,” projected the trademark office website right onto my office wall, and gave us a live demonstration of searching for our company names and slogans. Here’s how:

Go to www.uspto.gov, the Patent and Trademark Office website and database. Click:
-- Trademarks
-- Search Trademarks (TESS)
--Basic Search (Type in your term, click Submit)

There you will see all the trademarks that contain your terms—or maybe there won’t be any.

Notice on the right, you can click “Check Status” and “Live/Dead.” Check the status of a “dead” trademark; you’ll often discover that someone just failed to complete simple steps in mid-process and thus abandoned their trademark. How sad.

Even if your mark is not taken, you must search all similar terms. This is because getting the trademark will preclude someone else from using a confusingly similar mark. That’s why it’s such important property to get! For example, I decided to register “. . . without driving yourself crazy” like in all the “. . . For Dummies”® books. No-one had registered that phrase. (The phrase “grow your business,” on the other hand, is contained in numerous marks.) But I had to search everything that was similar—without going crazy, without driving yourself batty, etc, etc.

I didn’t realize that trademark registration is by “class.” A “class” is the type of product, or service, you’re putting that trademark on. (And yes, trademarks and servicemarks are really the same – one’s just on products you can hold, the other is on services). I registered in four categories: recordings and software, business consulting, seminars, and printed materials. So even if your mark is taken in another category (say, Auto Parts) you may still be able to register it in your category (say, Baked Goods).

If your mark is already registered in your category, then after you finish kicking yourself for not registering it much earlier, you have three options, listed by increasing attorney’s fees:

-- Choose a new name or slogan.
-- Finagle, negotiate with the trademark holder for a license to the name.
-- Fight it.

There’s a lot more, of course. Want more? Sandy will do another workshop for us in the fall. Let me know if you are interested, I’ll keep you informed of date, time and place. Got a group? We can come to you (if you have a DSL connection and a digital data projector).

Or you can call Sandy directly: 707-333-6391. Email: sandy@goodsolutions.com.
Here’s why I work with Sandy:
a) She has a great smile and tells corny stories.
b) She showed me how to save a chunk of money on the registration process.

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©2003 Mike Van Horn. Published by The Business Group, San Rafael, California.

Reach Mike Van Horn at 415-491-1896, mvh@businessgroup.biz

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