Trademark Lawyer in Phoenix, AZ

Protect Your Brand

One of the most valuable assets of a business is its brand (name and logo). However, this asset is often left completely unprotected. A strong, registered trademark protects your brand and your business.

Businesses spend thousands of dollars creating their brand by hiring designers and advertising professionals, and then even more money marketing the brand to the public. This builds trust, name recognition, and valuable goodwill for the business, leading to growing revenue and profit.

But what happens if the business is suddenly prohibited from using its branding because a competitor has superior rights or another business starts using the same or similar branding, stealing customers? All that time and money invested would be for nothing, and worse, the business now needs to rebuild its brand from scratch or start a costly dispute with the competitor.

A registered federal trademark protects a business’s brand by giving the owner exclusive rights to the trademark and legal tools to protect the brand from theft.

Timing is critical in trademark law and if you wait to register your trademark it could be too late. At Glide Legal, attorneys Alex Karam and Masar Mandwee have gained years of experience in helping business owners acquire valuable trademarks that safeguard their brand against imitators and scammers. Take the first step to trademark protection, contact Glide Legal for your free consultation today.

Benefits of Having a Registered Trademark

Federally registering your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office gives you the strongest trademark protection and affords you greater rights to your unique name and logo within your industry. When registering at the national level, you will be entered into the public trademark database as proof of your ownership of your trademark and you will also be free to use the symbol for registered trademarks (®) wherever your logo, slogan, or design appears.

Other benefits include:

Nationwide protection: Trademark rights apply throughout the United States
Exclusive rights: Only the registered owner can use the trademark in relation to the specified goods or services
Increase Business Value: The exclusive right the trademark and added federal protections increases the value of the trademark
Marketability: It makes it easier to sell or license your trademark
Legal protection against infringement: Enables legal action against anyone using a confusingly similar mark‍
Federal Court: Gives you the right to file lawsuit in federal court over your trademark rights‍
Brand recognition and reputation building: Exclusivity helps consumers identify the source of a product or service, enhancing brand image‍
Deterrence of counterfeiting: Discourages competitors from copying your brand‍
Easier enforcement: Simplified process for taking legal action against trademark infringement‍
Access to online protection: May provide additional benefits like participation in Amazon Brand Registry

Importance of Having a Trademark Attorney

Registering a trademark is a complicated process that begins well before the filing of the application. The first step is to ensure your brand name and logo are eligible for trademark protection. While there are many requirements, the main considerations are:

Descriptive/Generic Issues. The brand name is not generic or merely descriptive (without acquired distinctiveness). Names that simply describe what the product or service are not eligible for trademark protection – for example a coffee shop called “Coffee Shop.” However, even a descriptive mark can be trademarkable if it has been used so extensively that consumers have begun associating the product or service with the brand – for example, “American Airlines.” A trademark attorney can determine whether you meet this requirement before spending time and money on the application to avoid wasted costs.‍
Ensure Interstate Commerce. The business must be using the name or logo in interstate commerce (i.e., not just within a single state). At first glance this appears to foreclose trademark protection to many businesses. However, with businesses having an online component or offering services to consumers outside of their state, a trademark attorney can identify ways that even a business located in a single state can meet this requirement.‍
Confusingly Similar Issues. The proposed trademark cannot be confusingly similar to other registered trademarks. The term “confusingly similar” is a legal term of art whose meaning has been created over years of case law. It is not as simple as making sure the same name is not already registered. A trademark attorney makes sure your proposed trademark is not “confusingly similar” to existing trademarks before you spend the time and money on the application to avoid wasted costs.

In addition to ensuring you meet the above trademark requirements, a trademark attorney also analyzes the strength of your proposed trademark. Not all trademarks are created equal, and some are stronger than others. There is a spectrum, with the least protective being the descriptive mark with acquired destructiveness mentioned above. The list then includes, from least to most protective:

Suggestive – The mark hints at a product or service's nature or attributes without directly describing it (i.e., Coppertone)
Arbitrary - These are words with dictionary meanings that are used for products or services that have no relation to the word's meaning (i.e., Apple)
Fanciful - Also known as coined or invented marks, these are made-up words with no meaning other than identifying a product or service (i.e., Xerox)

Lastly, the trademark attorney completes and files the trademark application for you, including helping you determine whether you need an intent-to-use application, TEAS or TEAS Plus filing, and which international classes to file under. This saves you the time of completing the complex application, but it also ensures it is done right.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office also sees that the filing was completed by your attorney and communications are directed to your attorney. In some cases, the USPTO attorney reviewing your application will decline to register your proposed trademark but will give you a chance to argue why it should be registered, and a trademark attorney researches and crafts the arguments to overcome this denial.

When it comes to protecting your business’s most valuable asset, make sure you have a professional trademark attorney in your corner so it is done right.

Contact a Trademark Attorney Today

If you are interested in safeguarding your brand and protecting your business’s most valuable asset, set up a consult today with one of our trademark attorneys. For Glide Legal’s founding attorneys, Masar Mandwee and Alex Karam, building long term partnerships with business owners is a top priority. We know that starting a business is no easy task, including protecting your brand, so Glide Legal strives to gain the trust and confidence of our clients by proving ourselves time and time again as a trust business legal advisor.

For more information about the first steps to registering your trademark, call or book a free consultation using this LINK to get in touch with our attorneys. During your free initial consultation, we will gather information about your mark and provide you with a general overview of the trademark registration process. After that, we provide a flat fee quote for our representation. Don’t wait to capitalize on your brand, contact the attorneys at Glide Legal and get started on obtaining your trademark today!

Verified Review

Matthew
Bingham

Masar and Alex helped me with a business transaction and made everything very easy to understand. I felt like I was talking to a friend that cared about me, not a lawyer that only cared about fees. I plan to use them again going forward.

Scott
Boyer

I have had such great experiences with Masar and Alex. They have excellent listening skills, are knowledgeable, responsive, and are great communicators. They have been a tremendous help for me and my business, when I needed contracts written to conduct my business with my clients.

Kim
Root

Excellent service and responsiveness. Alex explained all the details of the LLC formation we were seeking and seamlessly led us thru the process start to finish. 10/10 recommend!

Trademark Lawyer in Phoenix, AZ