| By :
Wendy Moyer
Trademarking a name is one of the basic necessities of business life. A trademark is one of the fundamental assets of any business. Trademarks set you apart from your competition. They secure your identity and protect your intellectual property. If you were to go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office at uspto.gov you will find that there is a rather lengthy and somewhat complicated process involved in securing a trademark. Even before you begin the application process you will need to determine the type of intellectual property protection that would be apropos to your situation. For example, are you sure that you are looking for a trademark, or do you need a copyright or patent? If you have determined that you do need a trademark there are a number of instructional videos that you could watch to learn some of the basic facts and the processing timelines. You really will need to invest the time watching them because you will have to familiarize yourself with all of the general rules and all of the requirements involved before you file your application. Next you will need to search the USPTO's database in order to make sure that no one else has already claimed the rights to the particular mark that you would like to claim. A lot of searches can be conducted online using the free Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) database. However, if the mark that you want to apply for includes a design element then you will also have to search for it using a specific design code or design codes. The site offers a fairly comprehensive "Design Search Code Manual" that should help you find the correct codes. Alternatively, if you are near Alexandria Virginia, you can physically conduct a trademark search at the Trademark Public Search Library. It's open from 8:30 am until 5:30 pm. Some information may also be found at a Patent and Trademark Depository Library near where you live. But keep in mind that the CD-ROMS that they have don't contain any design mark images. Finally, if you've found a mark that may conflict with what you want to register you will have to perform an additional search before you can begin to write a draft describing the goods and/or services you want to trademark. You can do that by checking the status of mark on the Trademark Applications and Registrations Retrieval (TARR) database. In order to access any information on TARR you will need to get the registration number or the serial number of the particular mark that you want to check. Once you have all of this accomplished you can actually begin the work necessary to claim your trademark. There Is A Much Easier Way to Get a Trademark What if there was a way to have an online company do all of this work for you and then go through whatever processes are necessary to file your claim for a trademark? There are such companies available and a number of them charge very reasonable prices to do everything for you. Not only will you save a lot of time, you will ensure that all the information is correct before you submit your application.
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