There is no requirement to register your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Registering your trademark with the USPTO, however, creates rights throughout the entire United States and its territories and includes your registered trademark in the USPTO’s publicly accessible database of registered trademarks. Further, having your trademark registered grants the legal presumption that you own the trademark and have the sole right to use it. Therefore, your registered trademark will grant you the right to bring a lawsuit concerning the infringement use of your trademark in federal court.
To determine whether a trademark is available, we offer several search options, such as a trademark search of the federal registry and opinion for a flat fee. Depending on the search results, if we recommend moving forward with an application, we will promptly work on preparing and filing your trademark application. After your trademark application is filed with the USPTO, a trademark examiner in the USPTO will conduct a search to determine whether the mark is registrable. If the trademark application is approved, the mark is published in the USPTO’s Official Gazette, and the mark may register in due course.
If the trademark examiner does not approve the application, we may be required to file a response to overcome any objection(s) or rejection(s) set forth by the trademark examiner. The costs associated with a response to a trademark examiner’s objection or rejection will vary depending on the complexity of the response and the time needed to attend to your case.