Trademark Registration and Rights Enforcement

A trademark (or servicemark) can be a name, slogan or design or a combination of those elements that is used to identify the source of goods or services.  The purpose of a trademark is to permit the public to distinguish a source of goods or services from others providing the same or similar goods and services.  For example, when you see an apple logo on a laptop, you know the source of that good is Apple.

A combination of federal and state law affords protection for certain type of trade and service marks to prevent confusion by consumers as to the source of the particular goods or services.

Registration of a mark, particularly under federal law, affords protection to the owner of a mark that helps to prevent others from using your mark or a confusingly similar mark for the same or similar goods or services.  Trademarks can grow more valuable as time passes and be protected indefinitely.

The Chapar Firm has had 20 years of successfully assisting its clients to develop and register their trademarks.  Trademark law is tricky and a mistake could be costly, especially AFTER a company has spent a large sum of money developing a mark, creating letterhead and business cards and other materials, only to find that the mark is already in use.   A proposed mark must be researched before the brand is developed.

In that same regard, the mark must be registered only in the categories of goods and services sold under the mark.   Any mistakes will result in a rejection of the application.  Lastly, the application is required to include a specific description of the mark and a specimen of the mark must be submitted, both of which must follow USPTO rules for filing.  We do not recommend that clients attempt to self-register their trademarks.  We have had several clients who came to us after attempting registration (to save attorney’s fees), only to end up spending a lot more money (the USPTO does not refund you for a rejected registration) to fix the registration or refile properly.  Once the trademark is approved, there are certain maintenance filings that must continue for the life of the mark – again with nuances that should be handled by a law office.  The Chapar Firm has over 20 years of experience in filing and maintaining trademarks for its clients to protect their valuable rights.

Copyright

Those who create “original expression” are entitled to protect that expression and profit from its sale or use.  Copyright protection may extend to the written word, computer code, film, graphical artwork, audio and many other forms of expression.  We assist our clients to protect, license and otherwise ensure the full protections that copyright law affords to them.