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Properly cared for, your trademark can develop into the most valuable asset you own. At a gathering of staff from several Coca-Cola bottling plants, a senior executive reportedly declared that “the company could lose all its plants, lose all its staff, lose its access to the sources of its raw materials, lose its capital and its accounts, but as long as it had [its trademark], it would be possible to walk into a bank and receive sufficient credit to replace the entire global infrastructure.”¹ Unlike other forms of intellectual property like a patent or a copyright, your trademark can live forever. Given its potential value and import, even fledgling companies should recognize that their trademarks are sacrosanct.
Too often, clients come to us with trademark applications filed through automated services like trademarkengine.com or similar services. The price for such services looks too good to be true because it is. Once a federal trademark application is filed, there are many significant limitations on how it can be amended. A trademark attorney with years of experience dealing with the Trademark Office can help you identify problems that you did not know existed. In most cases, it is important to identify these issues as soon as possible. Being forced to change your brand after a year in business is often a death sentence to a young company.
Like medical work, a little bit of preventative legal advice is much more cost effective than triaging an early mistake. If you have used a DIY trademark filing website, you may be facing an Office Action from the Trademark Office that illustrates this point. Office Actions often read as though there is no hope for registration. In most cases, however, applicants have options. We specialize in navigating the thorny procedural issues that arise when dealing with the Trademark Office. We also litigate trademark disputes in federal courts across the country. Our expertise gives us a unique perspective that allows us to spot potential issues that attorneys who focus only on trademark applications or trademark litigation would miss.
Your trademark is your reputation. We want to help you protect it.
¹Rosemary J. Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law 56 (Duke University Press 1998).
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