Startups Stack Exchange Archive

What to use to protect web startup: (R) or TM/SM

• posted by: WildDev on 2015-05-17
• tagged: intellectual-property, trademark, security
• score: 1

What to use to protect the rights on commercial web startup including it’s property, such as domain names, dissemination of names&designations: registred trademarks (R) or unregistred ones (TM/SM)?

Since the trademark designations like TM and SM are even free, don’t require any registration process and appear the tools to protect a startup from commercial side as well as expensive registred trademark (R), what case I need to use registred trademarks instead of unregistred?

What would be the best trademark protection approach for the web startup “Example Ltd.” to protect this on 100% of following structure:

example.com

• ExampleTea

• ExampleCoffee
• ExampleWater

where’re all child services should to have the shared brand ExampleTeam? Can I use TM for each child service and SM for ExampleTeam brand without registring each one as (R) trademark and to be sure that everything ok?

Answer 5306

• posted by: Matthew Haugen on 2015-05-17
• score: 2

You’re right, trademark registration isn’t necessary.

Registering a trademark, however, does give you a couple advantages:

• More damages: If you sue someone for infringing on your trademark, you’re more likely to get, for instance, legal fees covered, if your trademark is registered.
• National claim: Using an unregistered mark in trade gives you some protection locally, since someone else who comes up and tries to use it on a similar classification won’t be able to, but by registering with the federal government, you’re able to move easily into other states without having to worry that other people will stop you from using it. You won’t necessarily be able to stop them, but at least your website won’t simply be banned from some state.
• Announcing yourself: Speaking a position that not everyone is filled with malice, there are a ton of brands out there, so if someone thinks of your brilliant name for themselves and does the best search available to them to find whether it’s been used, it’s nice to show up in the federal Trademark database.
• Substantial claim: Along the same lines as a national claim, once your trademark has been registered for five years, it’s presumed valid. In other words, they figure you probably have a good claim to it. At that point, it’s extremely difficult to have it cancelled by a competitor.

Of course, none of those are necessary. If you aren’t worried that people will try and steal your brand, you don’t need to “insure” for more damages, if you aren’t looking to enter several states or your name is just that revolutionary, you don’t need a national claim over it, and if you aren’t worried about people starting something with your name (particularly since you already own the domain), you don’t need to announce yourself.

But that said, it sounds like you do want some of that protection, with good reason.

Just a quick paragraph, in case you didn’t know: the purpose of a trademark is to protect consumers who may be confused about the source of a product. An example I’ve heard and tend to give on here is if I started a fancy restaurant called McDonald’s: people would come to me expecting cheap food and get frustrated, and people would go to the fast food restaurant expecting grade-A steak, and probably not be too happy either.

So the number one priority in this is to trademark the brand, since that’s what it’s there to do. If you’re selling things under the name ExampleTeam, I’d probably register that one, then just TM the others.

Remember that your business name is already protected in your state, so whether that’s important or not is really just a matter of whether you’re using that name somewhere that you wouldn’t be okay with someone in another state jumping in on.

As a general rule with intellectual property, you just have to decide where on the scale you want to fall:

Protection -----------------------------------------------------------------------Economics

If you want lots of protection, you’ll get advantages, but it’ll cost you. The cost of a trademark registration may be miniscule in comparison to the potential losses, in which case go for it. If it isn’t, then just go for the main brands in your collection.

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