Every business spends loads of resources educating customers on the value of its products, building brand loyalty, addressing customer issues, and distinguishing itself from its competitors. The point of all this effort is to build up goodwill and customer loyalty, which invariably lead to a long-lasting and profitable business. No matter the particular industry, that hard-earned goodwill and customer loyalty has a lot of value. Your trademark, by definition, is an embodiment of your goodwill. Therefore, a distinctive, properly protected, and well-managed trademark is often a company’s most valuable asset (according to Forbes, Google’s trademark is worth $44.3 billion dollars). Your trademark [...] Read More

The most common question we get is, "What is the difference between copyrights, patents, and trademarks?" People often use the terms interchangeably. Confusion abounds. Have no fear. Here's a quick breakdown. A copyright protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. So, we have a copyright on the words in this post because it is a literary work. We know. The definition is broad. Generally, a copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years after the author’s death. You can register a copyright [...] Read More

Why would a person go through the trouble of learning about trademarks? Because you really don’t have a choice. Your business needs to have a name. Once you start selling anything under any name or symbol you have a trademark. So if you own a business, you’re basically stuck with trademarks. Here is the “official” definition of a trademark: A “trademark” is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods or services of one party from those of others. Yawn. In non-lawyer, human language [...] Read More

We are trademark lawyers. A good portion of the time when clients come to us, they have already picked out a name for their business. They’ve spent a ton of time coming up with a name for their new business or product. They fall in love with one particular name. They go to Legal Zoom or wherever and form an LLC with the name. They buy the domain name, fire up social media accounts, buy business cards, and tell everyone the name of their business. Then they come to us to get a trademark. The problem is that most of [...] Read More