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Without a federal trademark for your business name, anyone can start a business using your exact name, providing the same products or services in any other state with ease.
The standard business incorporation process involves filing paperwork with your state. This does not prevent another business in another state from using your exact name or a confusingly similar one to offer the same products and services. If you do not get a federal trademark for your business’s name, you are at risk of losing your business’s name if someone else in another state goes through the process first.
“We waited over 10 years to file our federal trademark. I am really glad we used FSBR but I really wish we would have applied sooner. Our initial application was rejected and I thought we might need to change our name because there were businesses in our industry using a similar sounding name. Michael at FSBR worked for us to prove our usage of the name first, invalidated someone else’s trademark and successfully had another company cease and desist using their similarly confusing name. There is zero chance we would have been successful using a discount online trademark service.”
Kevin S.
Web Ascender
Our team of 25+ experienced legal professionals are ready to do the required research and determine the best approach to navigating the federal trademark application process for your name and specific services. It’s important to do the leg work and research what other businesses might cause you problems with getting your federal trademark approved. It’s not uncommon for initial submissions to be rejected and to have to do some significant legwork to push your trademark through and then protect it from use by other companies.
“I operated a business for 3 years and we were then contacted by an attorney that we were in violation of an existing trademark and we had to change our name, it was a painful and expensive lesson. During the process of changing our name we enlisted the help of FSBR to do the federal trademark application to ensure we never had that problem again. We went after a very simple dictionary word – which can be difficult to get a trademark on and even with some skepticism from FSBR they were still able to pull it off. We now have an amazing new name and FSBR has since sent cease and desist to competitors trying to use similar names. Without a trademark your entire business is at risk, it’s 100% worth paying for experts.”
Ryan D.
boast.io
Like so many things in life, you can attempt to do this yourself or with a cheap online tool to submit your paperwork. The problem is that if you don’t do the necessary research and have a strong position for your trademark and it gets rejected the first time, you’ll likely not have the resources and experience to make the adjustments and continue to push forward to make your trademark happen. Many of the do it yourself, or discount approaches are dead in the water if you run into a snag.
If your business name is important to your future success, it’s worth paying a few thousand dollars to work with experienced professionals that can navigate the entire process. Our team will then be available to you in the future if you need to stop someone else in another state operating with the same or similar name.
Have questions about the Trademark processes? Download our Trademarking Guide where we answer the 10 most popular questions about trademarking your business.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your business. We’ll do some preliminary research and get back to you with your expected costs to go through the federal trademarking process.
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