Trademark Law

For an e-commerce business, trademarks are essential for promoting customer recognition in the marketplace. To effectively create and protect trademarks, familiarity with the complex laws that govern trademark legal rights and processes is crucial. Busch IP Law offers trademark counselling, registration services, and post-registration support to clients throughout the United States. With more than a decade of extensive intellectual property practice experience, Busch IP Laws applies in-depth IP and business experience to help clients establish and protect trademarks for their products and services.

What Is a Trademark?

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination of those elements that identifies a company’s goods or services. Your trademark identifies the source of your products, provides legal protection for your brand, and helps guard against counterfeiting and fraud. Having a trademark does not mean you own a particular word, phrase, or design. It means you have legal rights to how that word or phrase is used with your specific goods or services. Those rights enable you to protect your trademark through enforcement actions.

You own a trademark when you start using a specific trademark with your goods or services, but your legal rights from simply using a trademark are limited. For stronger protection, you can apply to register your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which administers federal trademark laws.

Registering your trademark with the USPTO creates legal rights throughout the U.S. and its territories. However, the USPTO is not an enforcement agency. Taking legal action for illegal trademark use, including counterfeiting and infringement, is the responsibility of the owner of the trademark.

Trademark Registration

The complexity and detail of the trademark laws and process make it advisable to consider hiring an attorney to help you with the trademark registration in most situations.

Trademark registration usually takes about 12 to 18 months, although it can take more time if issues arise or an application is particularly complex. Getting help from a knowledgeable attorney before filing an application for trademark registration improves the likelihood that the process will go smoothly and efficiently.

Busch IP Law’s team of USPTO registered attorneys help clients with all aspects of creating and registering a trademark. He also provides guidance and support on post-registration matters, such as trademark-related agreements such as consent agreements, transfers, and licenses.

Busch IP Law trademark services include:

• Providing legal counsel on the eligibility and availability of a specific trademark
• Completing the necessary trademark clearance search that must be conducted before filing the application
• Preparing the application thoroughly and accurately and filing it with the USPTO
• Responding to legal correspondence from the USPTO, including Office Actions, during the registration process
• Making certain that the client is aware of the maintenance requirements for trademark after registration
• Following up after registration to monitor trademark use and identify the potential need for trademark enforcement
• Taking pre-litigation enforcement actions for illegal trademark use by others

Trademark Enforcement and Protection

To take advantage of the expanded legal protection provided by successful trademark registration, it is essential to monitor potential illegal use of the trademark. When monitoring reveals potential counterfeiting or infringement of the registered trademark, expedited action to combat the illegal activity should be taken immediately.

Trademarks are an important component of the brand protection services provided by Busch IP Law, which includes highly-efficient pre-litigation enforcement for potential illegal activity involving the intellectual property (trademarks, copyrights, and patents) of e-commerce startups and established businesses.