Many clients call me with a simple question: “Should I trademark my name?” The answer is, almost all of the time, “yes.” Obtaining a trademark on your name not only protects your name from potential trademark infringers, but also helps you ensure that no one else has been using your trademark prior to your use of the name.
When you undertake the process to trademark your name, a good trademark attorney will recommend that your first conduct a trademark search on your name. This is because if someone else has filed a trademark for the same or similar name prior to your now imminent trademark application, the United States Patent and Trademark Office can deny your trademark for your name. Therefore, the process of obtaining a trademark on your name is a good way to slow down and ensure the name you have selected can be used without infringing on another company’s trademark rights.
The second reason that the answer is almost always “yes” to the question of “should I trademark my name” is that when you obtain a trademark on your name you obtain the presumption of national ownership on the name. This is extremely important to a company that plans to expand in the future. For example, even if your company’s operations today are only in New York and Pennsylvania, a trademark can help you expand to California in the future without any problems. Let’s say that you expand to California in five years only to discover someone else has been using your name as their trademark. If you had obtained a trademark on your name you can force this other company to stop using the name as their trademark (so long as their use began after the date you filed for your trademark). If you had not obtained a trademark on your name, the California company could continue to legally used your name in California and force you not to use the name as your trademark in the California market. Therefore, obtaining a trademark on a name is extremely important if you plan to expand outside of your current market.
As you can see, when you trademark a name it gives you a national right to use the name (and prevent others from using the name) as of the date your trademark application is filed. After the filing date (presuming the trademark is ultimately approved) no other company can claim a trademark right superior to yours in the name. In today’s competitive marketplace a trademark of a name can be an extremely valuable asset to any company.