Business

Consider it an insurance policy for your corporate image.  Do you really want someone else to have the same logo as you? Not likely.  Registering a logo trademark is both offensive and defensive when protecting your image.  Offensively, it provides constructive notice to the public that you claim the right of ownership of that design.  You can bring a lawsuit in federal court against infringers and you can register the mark with the Customs and Boarder Control (CBP) office to catch counterfeiters.  Registering with CBP is imperative if your company product is one that can be easily counterfeited – like t-shirts or shoes.  Defensively, you are placing your logo on a registry where sophisticated big companies will search prior to developing brands or products.  Say a big company wants to design a logo for their new bottled water product.  You have a vitamin water product.  They search the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (or actually they would likely have one of us search for them) and find that you are already using this similar logo for your vitamin water product.  Big company will either be prompted to come offer you $ to acquire the logo or they will simply redesign their logo and use one that will not be confusingly similar to yours.  It’s really quite brilliant.

Take our logo for example. We’re not a high risk company when it comes to counterfeiters.  It’s not likely that the Boarder Control officers will confiscate a bunch of legal documents being shipped in from overseas manufacturers.  We do, however, want to make sure that other law firms in the U.S. don’t choose a similar design.  If they do, we’ll tell them to stop.  If they don’t stop, we can sue them.  It is a way of protecting the public from thinking they are doing business with one company when they are actually doing business with another.  It should actually be considered our civic duty.  Start out clean – register your trademarks.