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Trademarks
NORTHERN NEVADA L AWJournal
Protecting your good name – Federal trademark registration By Abigail Stephenson — Blanchard, Krasner & French
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rademarks have been around for a long time (a really long time). The basic purpose of a trademark is to enable a consumer to identify the source of the good or service they are consuming. Trademarks also protect the investment of a producer in the reputation of its good or service. Imagine a world without trademark protection: How would a consumer know an authentic good from a counterfeit? How would a company protect the goodwill associated with its brand without the ability to stop others from using that brand? This article provides a brief overview of trademark “basics” and why most businesses should consider federal trademark registration for key brands. What is a trademark? A trademark is a word, slogan, symbol, design, or combination of the foregoing that identifies the source of a good or service and distinguishes the source from others. In their most common and simplest form, trademarks protect brand names and logos. Some examples of well-known trademarks with significance in Reno include the name Patagonia for clothing and the Tesla “T” for its electric vehicles. What are the benefits of federal trademark registration versus common law trademark rights or state trademark registration? The most critical right a trademark owner desires is the right of exclusive use. In non-legal terms, the right of exclusive use is the right to prevent others from using the same trademark on the same or a similar type of good or service. There are three ways to establish a right of exclusive use in the
United States: common law trademark rights, state registration, and federal registration. Because trademark rights in the U.S. are based on use in commerce—that is, use it or lose it—the first two options require that a mark be in use in commerce before any rights of exclusivity can be secured. The three methods to establish trademark exclusivity rights are discussed in order of least to most protective below. First and most limited: common law trademark protection. Simply using a trademark in commerce can create some rights of exclusive use (assuming no one else is using a confusingly similar mark already). No registration is needed. Common law trademark rights are very limited in that they only protect use of the trademark within a particular geographic area and they can
be difficult to enforce because there is no public record of the trademark and when use began. Some trademark owners use a “TM” or “SM” to designate their claim of common law trademark rights over a specific brand-identifier (E.g. MadCATSBikesTM).
“A trademark is a word, slogan, symbol, design, or combination of the foregoing that identifies the source of a good or
service and distinguishes the source from others.”