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Trademark Registration: Registering Your Business Trademark
from:Deb St. George, on Patents and Trademarks in your Patent and Trademark Guide From Agritrax.com
Today, many people go into employment to earn enough money to start their own business. Besides, with your own business, you will be able to have more freedom and run the company the way you want it to run. Having your own business means that you no longer have to be a slave in a company that you don’t even own.
It is a fact that owning your own business can provide a lot of advantages. However, you have to consider that starting it can be a complicated process that you need to remember. The first thing you need to do when starting your own business is think of products or services that you want to sell to the public. You also need to make a feasibility studies about your business. You have to consider things like expenses, estimated gross and net profit, the business name, the public, the location of your business and even your trademark for your products and services.
Once you get things organized, you have to know that the trademark is something that you need to register with the PTO or with the United States Patent and Trademark office. The PTO is responsible for registering patents and trademarks. They are also the ones who copyright trademarks and patents. They will also be responsible in patenting new inventions as well as copyrighting architectural designs and other documents.
You may wonder why is it important that you should go through this lengthy process when you want to start your own business. First of all, a trademark is a seal of your business to let people know that the product they are purchasing came from your company. The trademark is very important. Just think about it. When you are shopping for a particular brand of shirt or a pair of shoes, you look for a trademark to determine who manufactured it. You look at trademark to base the quality of the product.
You can file your trademark in the PTO yourself, but you can also hiring a patent and trademark attorney to guide you through the rest of the process. The first process for registering your trademark is by filing an application form with the PTO. The PTO will be the ones who will be responsible for federal registration of trademarks. After you have submitted the application, the PTO will review it and determine if your application for trademark registration meets the requirements for receiving a filing date.
If your application for trademark registration has all the minimum requirements set by the PTO, they will assign a serial number to it and will send you the receipt about two months after filing your trademark registration. However, if the minimum requirements are not met, you will receive everything by mail. It will even include the filing fee.
After four months of filing, the next step is getting your application reviewed by an attorney working for the PTO. They will determine if the trademark you are trying to get registered has already been registered or has similarities to other kinds of trademark that has been submitted or are already marked registered. If the trademark is determined by the examining attorney that the trademark you are trying to get registered is unacceptable, the attorney will contact you by telephone and by mail and tell you the reasons for rejection and about the corrections required that you should do with the trademark.
You must respond within six months after you received the letter of rejection or your application for registration of your trademark will be abandoned. However, if you did respond but didn’t solve any of the objections or the reasons for refusal, the examining attorney will then send you a final refusal letter and will also contact you by phone. You should comply with the objections and you can also appeal to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in order for you to get the trademark approved for registration.
The most common ground for refusal is the similarities between the trademark you are trying to register and a trademark that has already been registered. If this is the case, you should try and alter your trademark that it doesn’t look like a trademark that has already been registered. It should be unique and bear little or no similarities to a registered trademark.
These are the basic processes for registering a trademark. So, if you plan on starting your own business, you should first think about the trademark you are going to use. Be sure that it is unique and bear no similarities to an already registered trademark.
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