No, you don’t have to register your logo trademark. If you would feel upset, though, if someone else used your trademark, then you should register your trademark — whatever that is — with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A trademark registration can save you a lot of time, money, and aggravation. Just having the registration can be a deterrent to trademark infringement and can serve as a big stick with which to whack naughty infringers. It can also prevent the innocent infringement — when you’re on the register, everyone who might be trying to register something similar. When you have a registered trademark, your trademark will forever be listed in the trademark office database for others to find and avoid. It puts others on notice of your use, and lets them know when you began using it, and what goods you are using the mark with, so that they can avoid trademark infringement.
But wait — don’t you get trademark rights just by using a trademark in commerce? Yes, it’s true that you have “common law” trademark rights just by using a trademark, but here’s the problem: No one knows about them, because you didn’t register your trademark. Your trademark is not in the database to be found, so how can anyone avoid it if they don’t know it exists.
It’s true that you can forgo registration now, and then spend time — and lots of money — fighting about later — but it’s a lot easier to prove your trademark rights when you have a trademark registration. Your trademark registration gives you certain legal presumptions, including things like:
- The presumption that you are the true owner of the trademark
- The presumption that you have the best rights to the trademark
- The presumption that you were the first user of the trademark
- The presumption of nationwide trademark rights
In order to challenge those, someone else has to come up with proof that you don’t deserve those legal presumptions, and that’s going to cost them time and money. Most people will just go away and leave you alone when you have a trademark, due to the time and expense involved in having that fight with you in Federal Court.
Registering a trademark is much less expensive than fighting about it later. Remember that when you have a trademark fight, you get to have this fight in Federal court — a very expensive and time-consuming place to resolve trademark fights — so be prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars on this process. You also get to spend literally years fighting about it, because nothing happens quickly in Federal court. Or you could avoid all that nonsense by registering your trademark. I’m just saying.
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Contact Dallas, Texas trademark attorney Angela Langlotz today to get started on a trademark application for your valuable brand.