trademarkCurrent state:
I’m in the process of talking with potential partners, investors, advisors… I genuinely believe that idea as legit and I would like to experiment, MVP, PoC in a lean and agile manner.
To register a trademark:
Or maybe ownership of the domain + website + some design documents is enough at this stage?
Interesting view here: https://startups.stackexchange.com/a/1294/6320
The only protection most startups need is that of a well-executed proposition coupled to skilled, determined and creative execution. Without that, you’re spraying pesticide before you bought seed.
As you’ve kindly quoted me, I think I’d better offer an answer tailored to where you are now.
First, there’s no cost or process for making use of the unregistered trademark symbol (MyStartup™). So if you want to demonstrate intent to protect, there’s your tool.
Second, in spite of the proliferation of top level domains, if what you want to protect is a name, registering that domain is often enough. Actually, it may be itself exactly the practical protection you want (which is that when people are looking for you by name, they’ll find you), far more economically and efficiently than legal process.
You already know my view on spraying legal “pesticide.” But there are exceptions. One of very few occasions I’d personally consider registration at the “deck and smile” stage of startup is where my own research shows that my intended mark is necessarily “near” a defended mark. Suppose Global Giant Corp has a well-known product Fribnitz. I want to leverage that, so I’m going with Fribnutz. Well, in that case it’s smarter to use the registration process (which creates an asset) than to just wait for the lawsuit.
It’s never too soon to register a trademark given the risk of losing your ability to trademark your idea later on down the road. From personal experience, I registered my own trademark as soon as I knew without doubt that I was diving into my business. However, if you’re going to rely on investor seed money as the ONLY source of cash flow for your idea (which shouldn’t be the case in the age of crowdfunding), it could be fair to wait until contracts have been finalized. Hope this helps!
Here’s the thing – The longer you wait to register, the more likely it is that someone else will be able to use whatever you want to protect without having to compensate you. It would fall under the “first use” provisions of the copyright/trademark laws, so you really don’t want to wait.
I’ll echo the answers Jeremy and I gave here on similar topics:
https://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/1284/registering-trademark-without-an-attorney/1294#1294
https://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/5224/copyrighting-a-product-before-registering-your-company/5226#5226
Until you can decide “oh I’ll just throw a few thousand at this tomorrow and not worry about ever making a return on that”, registering a trademark is a complete waste of time and money.
An attorney might, of course, tell you otherwise. They’ll tell you haunting stories about trademarks left unregistered because their users sought protection waaaay too late. It’s all correct. But it’s also disingenuous: their livelihood depends on you moving forward, and the less pragmatic attorney will tell you to move forward with it right now. Truth is, it can wait until you can afford it.
I tend to agree with not registering the trademark until a bit later. You can’t be certain you won’t do any rebranding or pivoting in the near future if the idea is still being validated and refined. You might want to wait on making it official until you’ve nailed the target market/demographics and can be certain your choice of branding really speaks to them.
Getting the domain is a great start to “protect” the brand at least in a practical way. I would also reserve the brand/domain name across social media sites, free email services (e.g., yourcompany@gmail.com), and any marketplaces/directories that might be related to your industry. Just create and sit on a bunch of accounts.
Not being able to use the name for a domain (or on any major site) should deter most people from choosing that name for their own business.
Heck, you might find that the name is already in use on major channels, and that you need to think of another one!
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.