Frequently Asked Questions
Your burning questions
Below are some questions that we get asked a lot. If you have any questions about trademarks that aren’t answered in this post, please feel free to reach out to us. We’re always happy to help!
The Trademarkings team has attorneys licensed in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, European Union, United Kingdom, and India. We can help you get a trademark anywhere in the world through our team directly or through our associates.
If you start with a free initial assessment of your brand, you will generally get a report within 24 hours. Packages with a comprehensive search will take 2-4 days to complete and then your trademark specifications will be drafted for your review and approval shortly thereafter. Once we have your approval to proceed, your application will be filed the next business day. Generally, the whole process takes 1-2 weeks from start to finish.
Depending on the country of application, it can take up to 12 months for your trademark application to be examined by the IP Office. We can have your trademark application expedited in Australia to receive your examination report within 1-2 weeks. Please see our country-specific pages for more information.
Your trademark will not be fully protected until the day it reaches registration. However, your filing date retroactively becomes the date on which your trademark can be enforced over infringing marks. It is important that you take action to start the application process as soon as possible.
You can use the TM symbol right now, or anytime you are wanting to claim common law rights over a mark. These rights offer very little legal protection. Once your trademark is officially registered, you can use the ® symbol, letting everyone know your brand is fully protected under trademark law.
Yes, once your trademark application has been submitted we will send you the official trademark number. This number can be sent to Amazon to register with the Amazon Brand Registry. In most countries, this will be acceptable, even while the application is still under examination. It is important that the brand name you apply for on Amazon is identical to the brand name on your trademark application.
It depends. Your trademark will be examined on 2 main criteria. 1) How similar it is to the other trademark, and 2) How similar are the claimed goods and services? There is a chance that you can still register your trademark if one of the above conditions is found to be dissimilar. Get a free assessment and we can take a look.
Trademarkings started in 2009 with a single attorney and service in Australia. We have since grown, and are now a remote team of trademark attorneys and IP Professionals located around the globe that love helping other entrepreneurs achieve their business goals. We believe trademarks are foundational to any successful business. Our team has filed over 11,000 trademarks across our service jurisdictions and this gives us an experiential advantage over most other firms.
We are a small fully remote team of trademark attorneys and professionals. This allows us to cut large overhead costs that traditional firms don’t. Additionally, with the use of technology, we spend less time on task work and more time doing things that matter. You might find cheaper alternatives, but we guarantee they will not offer a better price-performance ratio than Trademarkings.
Our trademark packages are tiered to allow for different clients’ risk tolerance levels. Some applications will pass through the examination phase without hiccup, but sometimes applications receive office actions or adverse reports from the examiner. In these cases it is often possible to overcome the objection through written response and achieve official registration.
Our basic package (without comprehensive search or responses) is intended for brands that have already been in business for some time and have no intention of rebranding. Some clients might also wish to test their luck with this package when they think there is no chance of an adverse report from the examiner and no chance of conflict with prior filing. If needed, minor and Major responses can be purchased after the examination report is received. This package is for clients who have a high risk tolerance.
The value package is our most popular package that covers the needs of most applications as it includes the comprehensive search as well Minor responses to office actions. If a major response is required, this can be purchased as an add-on service.
The All-Inclusive package covers almost everything you would ever need to see your trademark get registered. Major responses are covered in cases where we need to address confusion or descriptiveness objections from the examiner. Evidence-based responses and opposition proceedings are not covered and are quoted on a case by case basis. None of our packages cover formal appeals before the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board either, in the event that our argument against an Office Action is rejected.
The search that comes with the Value and All-Inclusive packages are comprehensive search reports put together by our trademark attorneys. These searches go well beyond an exact match search with the IP Office or Google. Our attorneys use their experience to gauge the likelihood of conflict with prior applications, oftentimes this is unclear to the uninitiated. We know what to search for and how to identify potential issues. Your report will include a summary of any issues found and also a percentage of the likelihood of rejection. At this time, it is sometimes worthwhile to make slight changes to the mark.
Yes, all the IP offices only allow one trademark (word, design, phrase, etc) per application.
A registered trademark protects against third parties using identical marks and also similar marks. Two trademarks are considered similar if they overlap in dominant characteristics or distinctive elements. This means that your logo (design trademark) may also provide protection over the words within the design if words are a prominent feature of your design. Similarly, if a third party attempts to register the words within your design, you have legal grounds to oppose their application.
A word trademark protects the name in any context, but no specific font or graphical design elements are protected.
In general, we recommend first registering the word trademark (brand name) as this allows for the most flexibility in real-life usage. Ideally, if you have the budget, and want to receive full protection over your branding, you must also register your logo.
Yes, we offer 24/7 trademark watch services starting at $20 a month. This service will periodically search the official trademark database for confusingly similar third party applications, which we can oppose if desired.
Yes! Please contact us for more info.
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If you have any questions about our services or simply need to get in touch with our team, please do so. We will be happy to help you with whatever it is that’s on your mind.