A trademark does come with rights. If you are going to be using a good trademark, you don’t want others to take that trademark from your hands and to profit from it. Trademarks do come with rights.

The main right of a trademark is that they can not be used by others to help sell their product. In some cases, trademarks that are similar can often be confusing so a trademark’s rights also protect you from someone that has something that is similar to your own.

Don’t be confused, though. A trademark does not prevent someone from making a product or offering a product that is similar to your own. This is considered a patent. Even those that offer services that are like your own with a clearly different mark are not infringing on your trademark rights as owner.

Tell The World About Yours

So, how do you tell the world that you have the rights to this trademark? 

In the next chapters we will go into more detail on this but a trademark will need to be registered to tell others that it is yours.

This is commonly done with those trademarks that will be used for both interstate and foreign commerce. You will register them with the United States Patent Trade Office. The process of doing so is rather straight forward. The hardest part is coming up with your own trademark to have registered!

Once you have registered your trademark you can forget about it, right?

That’s not completely true. The fact is that your rights for that trademark will go on indefinitely as long as you do a few things. Most federally registered trademarks, such as those registered with the United States Patent Trade Office are going to last you as long as you continue to use them in relation to your goods and services.

You’ll also need to have all of the necessary documentation filed with the USPTO at the right time to make this happen. You’ll need to file two things.

1.    Affidavits of Continued Use or Excusable Nonuse under 15 U.S.C.

2.    An application for renewal under 15 U.S.C.

For your use later, you can find these forms right on the website of the USPTO to use. But, remember this is only the steps for renewing your application for trademark rights, not to establish them in the first place!

Defining Trademarking

You can clearly see what a trademark is and how the process works. But, what is trademarking? Trademarking is the process of establishing your trademark, which we’ll teach you here.

The process of doing this is a bit more complex than just determining what your product is, what’s a good way to show it off and then signing on the dotted line. 

Remember, your trademark defines you and therefore the process of creating a trademark is one that has to be unique and somehow significant to your concept, product or service. An effective trademarking process helps to identify the right trademark for your business.