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Be The First To File Protect Your Trademark on the Principal Register Principal Registration has more rights. Trying to stop someone from using your unregistered (common law) or pending mark or Supplemental Register mark is difficult. Be The First to File! Why is registering a smart choice? To capture goodwill into a protectable asset and to keep newcomers to the market from using your name and jeopardizing your success. Federal Registration of a Trademark with the USPTO expands existing trade rights or common law rights in a name, logo, symbol, trade dress or other type of trademark or service mark so that a trademark owner can capitalize on the goodwill and customer recognition associated with the mark. A federal registration on the Principal Register can be used to stop others from taking your name or names confusingly similar to it to sell similar products and can be used to stop counterfeiting imports or state or local counterfeiters. About 50% of trademark applications never register and many never register because the newcomer’s or junior’s trademarks are too similar to marks that are already registered (prior users or seniors). For someone with a federal registration, the USPTO stops new similar junior applications by issuing Likelihood of Confusion refusals (the most common refusal) without additional cost to the senior user every time they do it. A senior user without a registered mark has to try to stop all these newcomers themselves at their own cost each time. If the USPTO trademark examiner uses your registered trademark to stop even just one newcomer from registering a trademark very similar to yours, your investment may have already paid off. HELP FROM SOCIAL NETWORKING: Third parties like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, and others respect registration rights and give protection to trademark owners that can clearly prove their rights to a mark and a Principal Registration works best. The table below lists the rights that the federal government gives you if your federal trademark application matures into a registration (see the YES rows) but there are more rights that third parties grant to federal trademark registrants. Third parties such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Bing, Twitter, Facebook and others will help trademark owners to protect their rights. For examples of increased rights provided by third parties to trademark owners, see GOOGLE ADSENSE TRADEMARK COMPLAINT FORM, MSN TRADEMARK SUPPORT, MICROSOFT ADVERTISING GUIDELINES, TWITTER TRADEMARK POLICY. PROTECTING YOURSELF MEANS GETTING THE RIGHT HELP: At the end of the day, a trademark owner is responsible for protecting their own rights. A owner must claim and enforce their rights in order to receive the benefits. Online medias, advertisers, social networks and others will help you to protect your rights if you can prove those rights clearly to them with a federal registration of a trademark and only if you take the initiative to do so. Not Just Patents® Legal Services is the right help. Our success rate with registering trademarks is very good and our costs are not high which can turn out to be a great investment. Our success rate with answering office actions is also very good but unfortunately, many refusals given to junior users for Likelihood of Confusion stick because the junior user really is jeopardizing the success of someone else who used the trademark first and registered their trademark first. But not always. Sometimes the one who registered first was not the first to use the trademark and enforcing rights requires going further and opposing or cancelling the trademark of the owner who registered first but didn’t use first. We can help with this too. |
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Trademark Rights |
Principal Register |
Supplemental Register |
Common Law |
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Bring infringement suit in federal court based on the federal registration |
YES |
YES |
NO |
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Can be used by trademark examiner against future applications of confusing similar marks |
YES |
YES |
NO |
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Mark is easy to find for search reports |
YES |
YES |
NO |
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Owner can use ® to symbolize federal registration |
YES |
YES |
NO |
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Incontestability of mark after 5 years |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Statutory presumption of validity |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Statutory presumption of ownership |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Statutory presumption of distinctiveness or inherently distinctive |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Statutory presumption of exclusive right to use the mark in commerce |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Can be recorded with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to prevent importation of infringing goods |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Ability to bring federal criminal charges against traffickers in counterfeits |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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Use of the U.S. registration as a basis to obtain registration in foreign countries |
YES |
NO |
NO |
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