New business owners always want to know how they can create the best trademarks. A great trademark will have four elements:
1) It is “arbitrary and capricious.” Made-up words, like lululemon or Starbucks, make the strongest trademarks because they do not have any meaning in the English dictionary. So, you’ll never get a rejection from the Patent and Trademark Office because the trademark is “merely descriptive” of the goods and services — that would be impossible! So put on your creative thinking cap and make up some funny crazy words to make your brand stand out.
2) It stands alone. Loneliness can be sad, but not for trademarks. You want to avoid a situation where your mark shares common elements with a bunch of trademarks in a particular niche of products or services. If you’re not going to make up an “arbitrary and capricious” mark, at least use some words that not everyone else in your field is using. That will distinguish your brand from the competition and make it stronger and more defensible.
3) It’s clean. Make sure you or your trademark attorney (I know a good one in Denver!) conduct some searches to see if other marks out there could be considered “confusingly similar” to yours. Even if you’re not using a trademark lawyer to help register your mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, at least do a google search and use the PTO’s TESS tool to check for similar marks.
4) It’s registrable. Your trademark should not contain an acronym, someone else’s name or registered mark, or a generic term that describes the product or service to which it will be applied.
Please contact us if you’d like to meet with a Denver trademark lawyer to discuss how to best create and protect a great trademark! Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash
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