intellectual-property, trademarkI’m developing an own commercial web project and I’m going to distribute it under a trademark. But currently it under construction and I have to reserve the trademark rights somehow until the project is done without forming a legal entity, is it even possible?
Is it enough to post webpage with specifying the trademark name Trademark™ and Comming soon inscription? Will that help to specify the list of coming soon products with a description?
In this case, if somebody will register it as full-rights trademark (R) before me, would it be possible to challenge the registration?
Just for a spot of background, registered trademarks are a bit tricky for this. As it sounds like you know, to own (and thus to register) a trademark, you must be using it actively in commerce. For a startup that’s pre-launch, that’s often not possible.
To accommodate that use-case, the USPTO has an “intent-to-use” application. As suggested by the name, this is a way to register your interest to register the trademark at a later time. There are a few things you have to do to keep your intent-to-use alive, but ultimately, the idea is that you’re “claiming” the mark for six-month intervals (which you’re paying for, of course). That stops anyone else from registering the mark themselves, which is good.
Once you’ve got it registered, it’ll be much easier to challenge anyone else who tries to use the mark before you get up and running, because the date you filed the intent-to-use will count as the registration date for the trademark itself.
Ultimately, before you’re using the mark in commerce, there’s not a lot you can do to stop anyone else from using it, because you don’t have the trademark (implicit or otherwise) yet. But if you want to stop others from registering before you, and you want to stop people who used it during this period once you do have it registered, an intent-to-use is a nice way of doing that.
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