A trademark is your identity. If you are a business owner, new or old, you need to have the ability to be distinguished from other businesses that may offer something similar to your own.

Take for example, the number of hamburger locations in your own city. If you didn’t know the trademarks of the “arches” or the “king” then you wouldn’t be able to identify their products as easily. You can easily picture these in your mind, and that’s what you want to accomplish for others when it comes to your own business.

Through trademarking, you can successfully get your business on the map. You create a way for others to affiliate your business with the product that they need, want or that they will need and want. 

The process can be long and drawn out. Often, you need a legal professional to walk you through the entire thing. The good news is that you can do this successfully when you understanding the process. That’s what we’ll educate you with here.

Trademarking: What’s That Mean?

In order to trademark your business, you need to fully understand the process of trademarking. Much of this process will need you to understand your product as well as understand the legal aspects of trademarking.

Throughout this ebook we will show you and explain to you each step of the process. We’ll give you some excellent ideas to help you to get started. Most importantly, you’ll have everything that you need to know, starting with learning what trademarking is and what it does for your business.

What Is A Trademark?

A trademark is a distinctive signature, sign or saying that in some way depicts a specific company. It is used to identify a product, a service, or an event for a specific organization. It is used to help that organization stand out from others. 

In legal terms, a trademark is also a type of industry property of that organization that can not be used by any other organization for their needs. Legally, this would be a violation of trademark law.

Usually, a trademark is a symbol, a logo, or some type of design that is used in some way by the organization. It can be an image, a phrase, or just a single word. Sometimes it is a combination of these things, such as in a company name’s design.

In some cases a trademark can even be something that is used to help a person to stand out. You could easily see this in some celebrities. Who can forget Elvis’s hair? Other celebrities have used trademarks to help them to stand out as well.

In short, a trademark is a brand name because it helps to identify your product with your name. While people don’t remember names well, most will remember symbols especially when they are designed in such a way as to create a memorable image! That’s something you’ll want to insure your trademark does.

According to the United States Patent Trademark Office, a service mark is, “A service mark is any work, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce, to identify and distinguish the services of one provider from the services provided by others, and to indicate the source of the services.” From this, you can clearly see what a service mark can mean to your business.

This is in comparison to a trademark, which is defined by the United States Patent Trade Office as, “a trademark includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from the goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.”

Why give you these definitions used by the USPTO? It’s simple. These are the legalities of the process. You need to understand that a trademark is something that you own, not something that can be shared with other businesses or even borrowed because you think it fits your business better than the owners. 

As you will see later in this book, the legality of the trademark has caused countless companies to be fined, sued and in turn to lose not only their trademark but also their funds from it. Therefore, when considering a trademark or service mark, you need to clearly understand the legalities that are defined in these statements by the United States’ governing body.