Secure Your Brand Archives

Understanding the Trademark Consent to Use Agreement

Brandaide Blog, Intellectual Property, Protect Your Brand, Secure Your Brand, Sustain Your Brand / Cheryl Hodgson

Trademark consent to use agreements are routinely used by trademark attorneys in proceedings to register trademarks before the U.S. Trademark Office. Such agreements are also called also called coexistence agreements, or live and let live agreements. The most famous example of a trademark consent to use agreement that was violated than that entered into in 1981 between The Beatles and Apple Computers.

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Trade Dress Registration: Trade Dress Examples

Intellectual Property, Protect Your Brand, Secure Your Brand / Cheryl Hodgson

Apple has created trade dress intellectual property and obtained a trade dress registration for more than its Apple trademark – the bitten apple. It also has a registered trademark, a trade dress registration for its Apple Store Design.

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Descriptive Trademark Sent to Rehab for Bad Brands

Brandaide Blog, Secure Your Brand, Select Your Brand / Cheryl Hodgson

Descriptive trademarks are “bad brands,” since they don’t qualify for trademark registration. They spend 5 years on the Supplemental Register and after release, must still prove secondary meaning aka acquired distinctiveness in order to be enforceable against third parties. This is an expensive, difficult hurdle most that most can never meet.

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How to Trademark a Domain

Brandaide Blog, Protect Your Brand, Secure Your Brand, Select Your Brand / Cheryl Hodgson

Clients and marketing professionals are often confused as to the difference between registration of a domain name and registering a trademark or service mark. Domains names are not trademarks. A domain is nothing more than an Internet address, much like the street address where you live. Domain names do not afford protection against use of the domain name for competitive products or services unless separate trademark rights are established and registered.

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Trademarking a Business Name

Brandaide Blog, Secure Your Brand, Select | Secure | Sustain / Cheryl Hodgson

In a dispute between two users of the mark Three Palms for hotels, a legal mess erupted, when both of whom failed to register a trademark before starting in business. Which Three Palms user got rights to expand into the rest of U.S?

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Why a USPTO Trademark Application Will Be Rejected

Brandaide Blog, Protect Your Brand, Secure Your Brand / Cheryl Hodgson

Who wants to go to the expense and time to file for a federal trademark registration for a new brand name and then get rejected? As many as 70% of all trademark filings are initially rejected, with the Examining Lawyer at the USPTO issuing an Office Action refusing registration. Some Office Actions are scary, complicated, and require expert trademark counsel.

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International Trademark Registration

Brandaide Blog, International Trademark Registration, Protect Your Brand, Secure Your Brand / Cheryl Hodgson

Need international trademark registration? The Brandaide international trademark attorney network offers local expertise for global business.

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How to Trademark a Website

Brand Conversations, Brandaide Blog, Secure Your Brand, Select | Secure | Sustain / Cheryl Hodgson

There are many businesses now who do not have a physical location at all. They’re strictly an Internet business. They sell only by internet. Then the question becomes what constitutes the actual proper use that qualifies for a federal trademark when you’re just on the Internet?

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Startup? Register a Trademark

Brand Conversations, Brandaide Blog, Secure Your Brand, Select | Secure | Sustain / Cheryl Hodgson

Should a startup register a trademark? How does one actually acquire trademark rights. . .?

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Trademark Registration for Local Business (video)

Brand Conversations, Protect Your Brand, Secure Your Brand / Cheryl Hodgson

Trademark experts Cheryl Hodgson and Bill Finkelstein discuss whether a local business needs a trademark registration. As a country of small local shopkeepers, the US by tradition grants some protection without a registration. But don’t rely upon that if you sell in more than one state.

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Secure Your Brand

Understanding the Trademark Consent to Use Agreement

Trade Dress Registration: Trade Dress Examples

Descriptive Trademark Sent to Rehab for Bad Brands

How to Trademark a Domain

Trademarking a Business Name

Why a USPTO Trademark Application Will Be Rejected

International Trademark Registration

How to Trademark a Website

Startup? Register a Trademark

Trademark Registration for Local Business (video)

Brand Going Global?

Nine Costly Myths About Trademark Registration

Guide to Trademark Registration Services

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Follow the Rules of Trademark Use in Marketing and Media to Maintain Trademark Rights

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