Once you have a uniquely designed logo for your business, the next step is to trademark it so that you are the only person in the whole universal with the legal rights to use it in branding or promoting your products and services. Failure to trademark your logo may give others a leeway to use it and trademark it for their businesses, and if the logo gains worldwide recognition as the ones we know, you stand to lose a great chance of global growth and dominance.

Before delving into the intricate details on how to trademark your logo, it is important first to understand what a trademark is and the particular items you can trademark. In simple terms, a trademark refers to a phrase, symbol, design, word, mark or any other device in use by a person or company to differentiate his products and services from those of other businesses or providers. Trademarks can also be seen as brands, and you can secure legal rights associated with it just like in the case of copyrights.

A business logo is thus a form of a trademark because it is used by individuals and businesses to distinguish their products and services from those of other companies. A logo can exist in the form of design, letters, words, symbols or a combination of all these. The process of securing a trademark for your logo in the United States is surprisingly not a complicated, and virtually any businesses or product owner can do. Just follow the steps listed below if you want to know how to trademark your logo in the United States-:

Perform a Trademark Search

The first step when you want to trademark your logo is to ensure that it is exclusively available for your adoption and use and that it is not in use, either in part or in whole by another party or business. The way to know about this exclusivity of use and adoption is by performing a trademark search. You can do this by searching the U.S Patent and Trademark’s Office records, or you can use the services of search companies like the Thompson CompuMark to find out if your logo is already in use by others and if it has been trademarked. It is, however, advisable to use a trademark attorney to do the search on your behalf when you want to trademark your logo. The beauty of using the services of such attorney at this stage is that they can refine the search terms to yield far much better results than you would have received when doing it on your own. Besides, they also possess the legal expertise to analyze the results and advise you more appropriately when you want to trademark your logo.

Secure Trademark Rights to you Logo

There are three distinct ways you can use to secure the trademark right for your logo once you determine its exclusivity. But this can only happen after you conduct a successful search, and you are sure that there is nobody else who has trademarked the logo or is using it. These methods include the following-:

Start using your logo – using the logo is the first way you can trademark it. In this manner, any person interested in using it will know that it belongs to someone and in most cases, they will look for other alternatives. The problem with this method is that it gives you very limited rights of over the logo. Any person can still go ahead and trademark it before you, thus making you infringe on their trademark rights if you continue to use the same logo.

File application with the U.S Patent and Trademark Office – though you can trademark your logo with the Secretary of State’s office in your state (when you intend to use it in your state alone), it is recommended that you file an application with the Patents and Trademarks Office so that you acquire national rights over the use of the logo. If your application is approved, your logo will receive nationwide protection and nobody else will ever be allowed to use it. It is also recommended that you use the services of a trademark attorney since such applications are always detailed with lots of legal jargon that might confuse you.

Enforce the Trademark Rights

Once you manage to trademark successfully your logo, the next and the final step is to shield it against adoption and use by any third party. This is what is referred to as enforcing your trademark and you do so by having a “trademark watch” in place. A Trademark Watch will alert you whenever anyone is using your logo or a nearly similar logo to yours. The other alternative you can use after you trademark your logo is to include the words TM on it so that whoever sees it will know that is already trademarked hence they can’t use it in any way.

These are the necessary steps needed when you want to trademark your logo in the United States. They seem simple, but when it comes to actual application, they may be tedious and confusing. This is why it is still recommended that you engage a trademark attorney at all stages when you want to trademark your logo.

Learn how important your logo is to brand identity and why it needs protection, here. 

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Understanding logo design trademark is just as important as understanding the core design principles. Whereas there are several definition of a trademark, with regards to logo design, a trademark can be defined simply as a symbol or a phrase used as a brand to tell the public about the existences of a source or a manufacturer of a particular product or service. It may feature a name, a device, a word or a combination of all these and it is mainly used to distinguish between designs from one company to another.

Every logo design trademark must be distinctive in the sense that whoever sees it must recognize it as a designation of a source and not just a decoration or a phrase. The strength or the relative distinctiveness of a logo design trademark will determine how much legal protection it will get from other competing similar marks. From the legal perspective, however, the relative strength of a mark might be different from what is perceived by designers or even the ordinary users of the products or services.

Under trademark laws, a trademark that suggests or describes a certain feature of a product or service is considered as a “weak” trademark. For instance, an “apple” may be considered as a weak mark for a business selling apple pies and other food businesses have the legal liberty to use apple without necessarily infringing on the trademark rights of the bakery.

A strong logo design trademark, on the other hand, consists of marks or images or words that do not necessarily suggest the goods or services of a particular company. For example, Apple and the Apple logo for the computer manufacturing giant can be categorized as strong logo design trademarks. The company can thus stop a wide range of businesses from using the same logo design for their products and services.

Logo Design Trademark Ownership

The ownership of a logo design trademark is slightly different from copyrights. It is not the creator of the logo design trademark that owns it. The ownership of the trademark belongs to the company dealing with the particular goods or services on which the logo is displayed. As a designer, therefore, once you create a logo design trademark, you immediately pass all the rights to your clients who will then assume complete ownership the moment they start to use them on their products or services.

Difference between trademarks and copyrights in design

Copyrights offer no protection for words, typographical logos, designs, and typefaces. But many logos may qualify as artwork protected by copyright laws. Technically speaking, when you work as a freelance graphics designer, you own the copyright on such types of works unless you pass them over to the clients.

But as a matter of legal concern, such copyrights are usually of no use to you as a designer. This is simply because such works often act as your client’s first trademarks and you have no permission to re-license them for use by another customer. If you do so, then your second client might be at risk of logo design trademark infringement because their logo is already in use by your previous customer.

Understanding Trademark Infringement

The main base for logo design trademark infringement is “the likelihood of consumer confusion” and it is very different from “substantial similarity” when copyrights are involved. Trademark laws do not take into concern whether or not the artistic impression has been copied. Instead, it protects the functionality of the logo as a brand. It, therefore, implies that if consumers are likely to think that a new trademark logo and the original logo represent the same company, then they will be considered to be confusingly similar and the second logo will be in violation of trademark infringements. Confusing similarity is determined by looking at the trademarks, the respective parties’ goods and services as well as other factors such as the relative sophistication of each of the party’s customers and the strength of the original trademark logo.

How to protect your trademarks

As a graphics designer, you may be faced with situations when you will have to protect your trademarks. This is irrespective of whether you have a company or you are practicing as a unaffiliated designer. The first step towards protecting your logo design trademark is to conduct proper clearance searches to ensure that you won’t be infringing on the rights of another mark. You are free to do the search on your own or engage a lawyer who might also help you out with certain legal components during the process.

The second step in protecting your logo design trademark is to apply for trademark registration. Through the registration, you will have advanced protection for your logo design trademark, including the presumption of exclusive national rights. Once you are done with the registration process, all you have to do to finally protect your logo design trademark is to include a TM symbol in the name or the symbol to show people that you claim the trademark rights.

Learn more about developing a brand strategy from our previous post!

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