Before beginning the process of trademark registration, you should contact the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) to make the familiar site, unless of course you have a good patent attorney in this case, you can stop reading. But for those of you who just want to start small and only the name or logo remarkable protect newly designed … read on.
The first step should be to determine whether a mark is what you really need. The Trademark Office of the USPTO handles brands only, while the patent office administers. The Copyright Office is actually a division of the Library of Congress, so if you are on the USPTO website, you are definitely in the wrong place. To determine whether you are in the right place, you can learn what are the three different types of intellectual property made above. The USPTO has a glossary that clearly defines these terms.
The next step after you have determined that the brand is in fact the intellectual property that you want to protect you in the USPTO database to determine whether someone else is already claiming rights to your trademark. The search is free and easy to do online. If on the other side contains your brand a design element of any kind or the logo, you will be prompted his search with the appropriate design code (s). You can also click the Design Manual Code Search at the USPTO website, you run through the identification and design process research.
If you find a brand you think is in conflict with the brand you want, write down the serial number or the registration of the mark. Then you can check its status in the Applications folder recovery marks and inscriptions (TARR) database. Do not give up all your resources are exhausted. You can see that the brand is not in use or is for sale, some of them very cheap. You might also want to find the product online and make sure that when they are no longer in use, there is no pending litigation or very negative aspects that you do not want to spill your brand. There is always a good idea to have a better idea of ??when it comes to brands when you can be absolutely sure that your so unique that it is useless.
Finally, each application for a declaration that the products and / or services identified with the brand, or used. The degree of identification will depend on the specific nature of goods / services and must be accepted by the acceptable identification of goods and service manuals, is that link is also available on the website of the USPTO.
