Filing for trademark registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office may provide a mark owner with several benefits. These benefits include:
- Up to $2,000,000 in statutory damages for trademark infringement;
- A legal presumption that the mark owner owns the registered trademark;
- The ability to file a trademark infringement lawsuit in federal court;
- The ability to rely upon a USPTO registration to file for registration and obtain priority in other countries;
- The ability to prevent the importation of trademark infringing goods through the US Customs and Border Patrol;
- Listing in the USPTO’s TESS database, which puts others on notice of the mark owner’s rights; and
- The right to use the ® to put others on notice of the mark owner’s rights and to prevent a defense of innocent infringement in a trademark infringement lawsuit.
Filing for trademark registration also provides the mark owner with several other benefits, such as the ability to rely upon the registration to have trademark infringing pay per click advertisements removed from search engines, the ability to recover trademark infringing social media accounts, and the ability to recover domain names under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy or the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
In light of these benefits, it is important that mark owners file for trademark registration as soon as possible so that they can take advantage of these rights.
