Trademarks and service marks are essential to every business. A trademark identifies your business as the exclusive commercial source of the goods and services you are providing. That is a significant advantage in a competitive marketplace. This applies with equal force to individuals who are self-employed, particularly those working from on-line platforms trying to build significant followings. Creating and registering a trademark can help immensely. Here are five good reasons to trademark your personal brand:

Trademarks make your business sophisticated and serious

There are a lot of self-employed businesses chasing the same customers. Having a registered trademark distinguishes you from your competitors and helps drive your sales, revenue and personal profits. Why? Trademarks are sophisticated, serious, and legal. As such, owning a trademark makes YOU sophisticated, serious, and legal in your market niche. Trademark registration requires advance planning, creative effort, attention to detail, the retention of good trademark attorneys and enough business success to cover the costs. In other words, owning a trademark is a signal to your customers and potential customers that you are successful and that you are worth associating with. You are not just another gig worker or a 1099-contractor. If you can get a trademark registered, then you can do the job. This helps you get the contract and, over time, creates customer loyalty which, in turn, helps your business succeed.

Trademarks make you “findable,” no matter the device

Like unique avatars on message and comment boards, a good trademark quickly identifies you and your business regardless of what platform or device your customers are using. Your customers already trust you. Using a trademark ensures that they can find you on any sized device. A good mark will be scalable and usable on any platform and with any medium (such as video, audio, packaging, etc.). “Findability” matters for two main reasons. With your current and previous customers, they find you and stop looking for one of your competitors. That is the key. For your future customers, they see your mark, which is unique and interesting and stands out from the crowd, and they give you a try. Again, because of your excellent trademark, your future customers stop looking at your competitors.

Trademarks lead to growth and make marketing easy

With a solid well-established trademark/brand, marketing and expanding your personal business becomes much easier. Trademarks can help jump start the process of creating a marketing plan. The launch of a new logo can BE the marketing plan providing an opportunity to send out texts, emails, and mailers to your current, former, and future customers. Interestingly enough, sometimes, the mark itself can create a small revenue stream. People like to buy merchandise depicting positive-message brands and marks. Wearing the logo makes them personal brand messengers. Many people like that idea. In the same manner, a trademark increases the success-rate for entrance into new markets. Think, for example, a national seller of famous cookies can use that brand to try and seize a market share for crackers. Your personal business can use the same technique.

Trademarks protect your business

A trademark allows you to legally protect your trademark and the sales and revenue that it generates. You are the only person who is allowed to use your mark (unless you grant a license). As such, you can prevent others from infringing on your mark by sending removal demands, cease and desist letters and filing suit in federal court for trademark infringement. Protecting your business in this manner is much more difficult if you do not register your personal brand.

Trademarks are themselves valuable

Trademarks themselves are valuable business assets. As discussed above, marks are useful for building a business. This is essential for the self-employed entrepreneur. But, as an added benefit, while building the business, the brand itself becomes a valuable asset that, potentially, can be monetized in the future.

Choosing a Trademark That Can Actually Be Registered

Not every brand name qualifies for trademark registration. The USPTO evaluates applications based on the distinctiveness of the proposed mark. Marks that are fanciful (invented words like KODAK), arbitrary (real words applied to unrelated goods, like AMAZON for retail), or suggestive (words that hint at the goods or services without describing them directly) are the most registrable. Marks that are merely descriptive of the goods or services — like FAST DELIVERY for a courier service — cannot be registered without proof of acquired distinctiveness through long use in commerce. Generic terms — the common name for the goods or services — can never be registered.

For the self-employed professional building a personal brand, this means that a distinctive personal brand name is far more valuable than a descriptive one. A freelance graphic designer who brands themselves “VIVID DESIGN” faces significant trademark registration challenges because the name is descriptive. One who brands themselves “NIMBUS” or uses a coined name has a much clearer path to registration.

Before investing in building brand recognition around a particular name or mark, self-employed individuals should work with a trademark attorney to conduct a clearance search. A clearance search examines the USPTO’s database of registered and pending marks, as well as common law uses of similar marks across the country, to determine whether the proposed mark is available for both use and registration. Discovering a conflict after years of brand-building is far more costly than finding it at the outset.

The Registration Process for the Self-Employed

Trademark applications are filed with the USPTO online through the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS). The application requires the applicant to identify the mark, the goods or services the mark will identify, the filing basis, and a specimen showing the mark in use (or a bona fide intent to use it). Application fees currently range from $250 to $350 per class of goods or services depending on the form selected.

The USPTO examines applications for substantive and procedural compliance and may issue office actions requiring responses. Many office actions can be overcome with proper legal arguments. After successful examination, the mark is published in the Official Gazette for a 30-day opposition period. If no opposition is filed, the mark proceeds to registration. The entire process typically takes 12 to 18 months from filing to registration, though this varies based on USPTO workload and whether office actions are issued.

Once registered, a trademark owner can use the ® symbol. The registration must be maintained by filing a Declaration of Use between the fifth and sixth year anniversary of registration, and then renewed every ten years. Failure to make these filings results in cancellation of the registration.

Enforcing Your Trademark as a Self-Employed Brand Owner

Registration provides the foundation for enforcement, but active monitoring and enforcement are necessary to protect the value of a trademark. The USPTO does not police for infringement; that responsibility falls entirely on the trademark owner. Self-employed brand owners should regularly search online platforms, marketplace sites like Etsy and Amazon, and social media for unauthorized uses of their marks. When infringement is discovered, the typical first step is a cease and desist letter demanding that the infringer stop using the mark. If the infringer does not comply, federal court litigation for trademark infringement is available.

The Lanham Act provides robust remedies for infringement, including injunctive relief, disgorgement of the infringer’s profits, actual damages, and attorneys’ fees in exceptional cases. See 15 U.S.C. § 1117. Even if litigation is not practical, consistent monitoring and cease and desist enforcement is important: trademark owners who fail to police their marks risk having a court find that they have acquiesced to infringement or abandoned their rights.

If you have questions about creating and registering a trademark for your self-employed business, contact the trademark lawyers at Revision Legal at 231-714-0100.