A small business owner has no property rights unless they register their business name. Sound alarming? Well, that’s right. Registering your business or domain name does not give you any automatic right to use the name as a trademark.
Naturally, when people create an entity, one of their ultimate goals is to get their name out there and make sure their brand is successful in the marketplace. Your name, logos and designs that identify your company name are an integral part of your brand.
In this regard, small business owners need to ensure that their copyrights and trademarks are protected in their quest to get their business operations off the ground through advertising and marketing their products or services.
A trademark gives the owner the right to take legal action for infringement against the owner of a business name that uses it for products or services such as those covered by their trademark.
The terms trade name and trademark are closely related. Let us first understand their differences.
Commercial brand
This is used to distinguish your products or services from others. Registration of a trademark grants the registered owner exclusive rights to use the trademark within the stipulated geographic region.
Business Name
A trade name represents the name under which a business operates. The registry only identifies the owners of the company. Registration of your name is mandatory and must be done before the company begins to operate.
Unlike trademarks, a business name does not give the owner proprietary rights to use the name to perform work. If you haven’t registered your business name, it’s wise to do so to avoid losing millions of dollars in the future in an attempt to protect it. In worse scenarios, you may lose the rights to use it. Since your business trademark costs a few hundred dollars and the application can be completed in minutes, it is important that you register it.
Why are trademarks important?
Trademarks protect the names, words, sounds, colors, or symbols that distinguish your products and services from those sold or made by others. Generally, if a small business owner operates in a small geographic area, he does not have to register his trademark. However, with the rise of e-commerce, selling your products or services through the trademark on the Internet to other regions or states makes protection crucial.
Sam, Trademark Attorney
“Today, everyone uses the Internet in one way or another, which, in my opinion, requires federal registration,” Sam said. “Perhaps the fundamental benefit of obtaining a federal registration is the fact that it expands your geographic reach to either the entire country or the state, depending on the type of registration you obtain.”
Trademark Function
Trademarks avoid any type of confusion that may arise in the event that several companies use similar or the same names and/or logos. The trademark process legally sends formal notice to others that your company owns the exclusive rights to a certain name within a specific geographic location.
Benefits
When your company name becomes famous, a person can use your company reputation to benefit. For example, in 2005, the name MorganFreeman.com was registered by a company that wanted to attract visits from those looking for information about the famous actor of the same name. Freeman decided to register his name as a trademark and obtained the rights to the domain name.
The brand process
As noted above, registering a trademark takes minutes and only requires a few hundred dollars. You can seek the assistance of a competent attorney to ensure that everything is done correctly. Keep in mind that you could lose millions of dollars in litigation as your company expands to become a large national chain.