In many cases, it makes sense for a company to expend the resources to trademark a company and/or product name. A large company in a tight market may wish to do so, and they have the people power and financial resources to tackle the problem. However, for a small or growing company, that process will likely be more difficult, either because of a lack of know-how or financial restrictions. There are ways to protect your product name though so don’t get discouraged!
The best way to defend your product name is to start using the Trademark ™ symbol right away. Start using it now in your marketing materials, webpage, company documents, etc. In this way if you ever get into a dispute over a name you have registered trademarked OR intend to trademark you can point to your marketing materials and clearly show evidence that you started using it first.
How do you know if you are the first person to use the name? The best and easiest way to find out is to conduct a search on the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) website, which can be found at uspto.gov. The USPTO is a great resource for not only searching current trademarks but for learning about the process of trademarking a name as well. If you navigate to the Trademarks tab in the header, and then down to “Search Trademark Database” you will be sent to the database where you can search word marks and design marks.
This is a great first step, but if you find that your product name is already trademarked, that does not mean you don’t stand a chance, as long as your product is in a different class than the other mark. Classes are generally different areas, such as Computer Software, Coffee Shops, or Design Consulting. For example, “BigJoes Donuts™” and “BigJoes Plumbing™” fall under different classes. However, if you are wanting to use the same name as a trademark in the same class as the registrant, you could find yourself in legal trouble.
Now you have your name, and you have made sure it is not in use by someone else in its class. Referring to the material and documents where you have mentioned your product trademark, make sure the first time the name is mentioned in a document that you add the symbol for trademark directly after the mark. You need to do this on every standalone document and webpage. You’ll add the TM symbol only after the first mention in a document and it is not necessary to add it after every mention in that same document. Adding the TM after every mention of your product name is mostly an aesthetic concern – it makes reading the material difficult and can even be annoying to your potential customers.
An easy way to add the TM after your product name is to learn the keyboard shortcut. Simply type ( + TM + ), in this case you will need to remove the spaces and the plus symbols and when you do, you will end up with a perfect graphical ™ to follow your product name!
