A trademark speaks volumes about the company it represents. It also helps navigate the customer to the respective company. People identify with catchy images and words readily and bond with companies represented by them at a subconscious level. Being lax in selecting your company trademark would disregard these unique advantages that it provides.
While it isn’t mandatory that you hire a lawyer for trademark registration, they provide the expertise that makes the process less risky and significantly easier. Here’s what a lawyer can do to make sure you have a unique trademark representing your business.
Trademark selection
Today’s trademark savvy generation may pride itself in choosing a witty and eye catching trademark. However, a lawyer puts it through a screening process to make sure it is found acceptable by court. They also have access to comprehensive tools to measure the ingenuity of the trademark, on a national and international scale. Trademarks that have numbers, symbols, letters or dictionary words seem to be less efficacious in capturing the public’s imagination. Coined terms have been known to be more effective – for example, Microsoft. If your trademark is a coined term then the originality of the term can be crosschecked by your lawyer.
Trademark registration
Trademark registration involves a series of steps such as searching for a trademark, preparing the trademark application, prosecution of the application and advertisement of the trademark in an issue of the Trademarks Journal. This is an arduous technical process hence hiring a lawyer to file the registration in court is an excellent idea. Professional trademark lawyers are well versed with the legalities in filing trademark applications as well as identifying symbols that can bypass statutory barriers. In certain cases, there is opposition to trademark registration in court and a lawyer can smoothen things out. A lawyer may also defend your right to attain a remarkable trademark which is opposed by the court itself.
Trademark commercialization
There are technical, economic, management, and business aspects of obtaining a new trademark can be fully explored and understood with the assistance of legal counsel. Make sure you squeeze every last dollar worth of value from your trademark. Good legal counsel will provide you with ways to strategically utilize your trademark so that you gain maximum market exposure. This, combined with a unique trademark, will send customers running through your doors in no time.
Studies have shown that trademark applications represented by experienced counsel have had a much higher rate of success than applications represented by an inexperienced person. In fact, applicants with no experience in legal proceedings have found themselves failing to register their trademarks more often than not. Why take the risk and ruin your chance to be represented by a unique trademark, when you can hire the services of a lawyer and greatly improve your chances?