Lanham Act

If you own a busi­ness, you spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time and effort build­ing it up to be suc­cess­ful.  You need to pro­tect it the same way that you pro­tect any­thing else that is valu­able to you.  What is the best way to do that? With Trademarks.

1) What Is A Trademark?

A trade­mark is any com­bi­na­tion of a word, name, sym­bol, or device that dis­tin­guishes the goods of one per­son from goods man­u­fac­tured or sold by oth­ers.  It does not just apply to man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­nesses, but also to ser­vice busi­nesses where it is called a ser­vice mark, but is essen­tially the same thing as a trade­mark.  Even a par­tic­u­lar color that brands your busi­ness can be deemed a trade­mark.  It could also be trade dress, i.e, the par­tic­u­lar inte­rior style of a restau­rant that is unique to that brand.

2) Why Do You Need One?

The world is com­pet­i­tive enough. Why let some­one take what you have worked so hard to build, when there is a rem­edy to pre­vent them from doing it?   A trade­mark will be able to help you pro­tect and brand your busi­ness with­out hav­ing to worry about com­peti­tors using and dilut­ing your brand, and con­fus­ing your cus­tomers with a prod­uct of lesser qual­ity.  Hav­ing a trade­mark helps you obtain your niche in the mar­ket­place, and helps cus­tomers rec­og­nize your brand.  As a busi­ness owner you spend large amounts of money on adver­tis­ing, mar­ket­ing, and other meth­ods of brand­ing your prod­ucts.  Don\‘t let that money go to waste by not pro­tect­ing your invest­ment in your busi­ness.  When you trade­mark your name, logo, or trade dress, you are pro­tect­ing both your busi­ness and your bot­tom line.

3)  How Do You Get A Trademark?

There are many dif­fer­ent ways to obtain trade­mark pro­tec­tion.  You can obtain pro­tec­tion through the Lan­ham Act, which cov­ers Fed­eral Trade­mark Pro­tec­tion, through indi­vid­ual state laws, and through par­tic­u­lar types of usage.  You want to make sure it is done prop­erly so you are get­ting the pro­tec­tion that you really want.  Your attor­ney can decide what is best for your business.

4) How Do You Pro­tect The Trademark?

A trade­mark can be lost when the trade name becomes so generic, or in such wide­spread use, that it no longer reflects a par­tic­u­lar brand, but only the prod­uct.  Exam­ples of this are Band-Aid brand adhe­sive ban­dages, Scotch Tape brand tape, and Xerox brand copiers.  One way to pro­tect against your trade­mark becom­ing generic is  mak­ing sure not to use the trade­mark as a sub­sti­tute for the name of the prod­uct, such as in the exam­ples above.  Make sure the trade­mark iden­ti­fies the brand.  Come in and we can dis­cuss what the best pro­ce­dure for you and your par­tic­u­lar busi­ness is, and how to pro­tect your trade­mark once you have it.