In nearly 20 years of practice in the field of trademarks with all types of businesses from all around the world, I’ve come to see some general themes among the trademarks, among the businesses, and among the clients. Over that time, I’ve filed thousands of trademark applications and received more than 3,000 registrations for my clients. I want to share with you today five things that the most successful clients all have in common.
- Number one is they don’t delay. They file early and they file often. If they’ve got a new name, they move quickly to apply for it and start the process because they know that delay can harm the process and harm their ability to protect or use that name.
- Number two, they file not only for names, they file for logos and slogans, and other indicators of source. Sometimes those are could even be sounds or nontraditional trademarks. So they don’t focus only on names, they focus on all the things that help create their brand that could be protected as trademarks to maximize the protection.
- The third common thing that they do is that they stay on top of their renewals. They know when the renewals are coming up because they dock at the deadlines, and then they act quickly when it’s time to file a renewal because they don’t want to jeopardize losing a registration. Losing a registration can sometimes be overcome, but it’s costly and it’s risky because in trademarks the past history is extremely valuable so you never want to lose the history of a registration if you don’t have to.
- Four, they move quickly when there are possible infringement situations. They don’t delay because the longer a company that might be using your brand name or infringing on it without permission, the longer that they go about doing it, the more invested in it they’re going to become and the more likely they are to fight for it. So not only does the passage of time potentially harm your legal case, but as a practical matter, it means that it’s more likely that the other side is going to dig in and therefore make it more contentious, make it more expensive, make it more cumbersome to resolve and deal with.
- And the fifth and probably most important attribute that I’ve seen among these most successful clients is that they don’t do the trademark work themselves. Even if they don’t use me, I’m happy as long as they use an expert, someone to guide them through the process.
If you’re looking for someone to guide you through the trademark protection process, reach out to me.
