Trademarks

Trademarks are a way of protection of business brands against the competition. Trademark is a formally registered symbol identifying the manufacturer or distributor of a product, or it can be non-registered and automatically protected in many countries.

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Trademarks

Should you use trademarks in your business?

Yes, you should use trademarks in your business. You should imagine, create, good names and brands and use them in your business especially if such brands are meaningful and make sense in marketing.

Even if the brand does not have a particular meaning connected to the business, such as brands Yahoo or Google, its marketing and reach can create it as an important trademark.

How to start using trademarks?

Nothing prevents you to start using trademarks right now. How you should use the trademarks is matter of understanding the good business practices.

On the example of the trademark YUPEE which you may use to sell juices, you would be using it in following manners:

Yupee Juice
Yupee Strawberry Juice
Yupee™ Juice (note the usage of the trademark symbol)
Yupee® Juice (note the usage of registered sign symbol)

The usage of trademark symbol ™ is allowed just to anybody, regardless if the trademark is registered or not. You should start using your trademarks even before they have been registered and in order to communicate to competitors that you are using the trademark, you are placing the trademark symbol ™.

This way, once somebody else attempts to register the trademark, you are hoping to have good evidences to prevent such new registration. It would require you to constantly monitor the trademark registry in your country or countries of your influence.

Yet, that is a good way and manner of protecting your trademarks without a special registration.

Further, you should be using your trademark as an adjective to goods and services you are selling. An adjective is a word that expresses an attribute of something.

Using the trademark in the above manner such as Yupee Juice, you are using it as an adjective. Eventually, people would call it Yupee. Some trademarks are not used as adjective, as it depends of their purpose, such as Coca-Cola or Google.

You would of course not want to mess with already established trademarks in your jurisdiction of influence. If you are in United States, you would make sure that nobody else has any rights or usage of trademarks in your state and also on the federal level. Same is valid for other countries. Citizens of European Union would need to make sure that trademark is not registered or used in their own country and also not on the level of EU as a community mark.

Further, trademarks are registered for specific goods and services and may be used for variety of goods and services by various companies.

Thus if you are selling Yupee Juice, somebody else could be well selling Yupee Shoes as by doing so is not colliding with the sales of the juice.

Once you know that your trademark is unique for the specific types of goods and services, you are free and you should start using your created trademark.

You are free to start using trademarks right now.

Using the Registered Sign symbol for trademarks

The registered sign symbol is the following one: ® and such cannot be used in United States without a trademark registration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

In other countries, the usage of the registered sign symbol may not be regulated, and thus free to be used, regardless if trademark is registered or not.

We recommend to those who did not yet register the trademark to use the trademark symbol ™ and once the trademark has been registered in whatever country or jurisdiction, to use the registered sign symbol ®.

In United States it may be an offence to use the registered sign symbol if trademark has not been registered.

Who can register trademarks?

Just anybody can register trademarks including private individuals and companies from all over the world.

Sometimes trademarks are registered by special purpose company and then leased to other companies thus diverting one part of profit into the trademark holding company.

Trademarks may be licensed or used in franchises, and in general trademarks are a tool of business protection and part of the RPW principles of RCD Wealth where RPW relates to Rules, Protection, Wealth as a formula for a financial freedom.

What is a trademark registration?

While simple usage of a trademark is automatically giving certain protection to it, such protection would be evidenced in the courts of law.

A trademark registration is a bona fide evidence of the ownership of the trademark and cannot be argued in the jurisdiction where it was registered.

By registering your trademark, you are also creating a new asset, new value belonging to your company, and the worth of your business is raising with more and more marketing of the trademarked goods and services.

Trademark registration helps you protect your brand from competitors and obtain damages in case they have been using the same trademark name.

When is the right time to register a trademark?

The right time to register trademark is right now and before you started marketing your goods and services. Trademark registration shall be considered a business secret and before the launch of the new product the registration shall be already in place.

Benefits of trademark registration

By using trademarks and especially by registering trademarks you gain certain business protection benefits.

You are marketing your brand, and you are preventing competitors to use the same brand and thus profit on your marketing. Imagine if your trademark is McDonalds, and you have invested so much in marketing it just to find out that in certain city there is a competitor who has opened McDonalds restaurant which is not the original McDonalds restaurant. Chances are that competitor would be gaining new clients, new guests based on the marketing that was created by original McDonalds. Provided that the trademark McDonalds is protected in that jurisdiction, in the territory within which power can be exercised, the original McDonalads brand can forbid to the competitor the usage, and also ask the competitor to pay the damages, moneys and profits obtained by using the original trademark McDonalds. Thus by using trademarks, you are protecting your efforts of marketing and promoting your own goods and services.
Same is valid for domain names. While the domain name registration does not automatically create a trademark registration, provided that you do have a registered trademark in any country or any jurisdiction, you are then able to take over the domains that have been registered without such registration and with the purpose to prevent the trademark owner to exercise their rights. Once you have a registered trademark, you are able to prevent other people of using it in domain names and thus dilluting your brand.
Business Image. You are gaining better business image when using your own trademarks. Customers will remember you and the level of your popularity is also determining the value of your own business.
Evidence of ownership. Your trademark once registered becomes your evidence of the ownership, and nobody can argue on that. Competition get discouraged to use the same or similar trademark and you gain more business space, resources, clients and sales.
Trademark registration will protect you of the other confusingly similar trademarks, so that you less possibilities of trademark infringements. Once registered, the trademark registry and the jurisdiction or country where trademark is registered is automatically giving you such protection.
With the trademark registration in United States, you become free to use the registered sign symbol ® that may gain you somewhat better Reach to the targeted public for your goods and services. In other countries and jurisdictions the usage of the registered sign symbol ® may not be regulated.
With the trademark registration you can obtain the statutory damages on each case of trademark infringement without need to prove the actual business damages. And that means some additional money coming due to mistakes and trademark infringement from your competitors. And they can be nasty!
Every trademark registration in one country provides you with the basis of trademark registration and priority in such registrations in other countries.

In which jurisdictions the RCD Wealth company registers trademarks for clients?

Our company RCD Wealth registers trademarks in following jurisdictions:

All United States states as a state trademark. This type of registration is relating to the single U.S. state and may be a good basis for protection of trademark in such state, and also the basis of protection of domains. Such registrations start already with US $60 depending of the state. Registration is available for U.S. clients and foreign clients as well.
We help our clients and businesses to register a U.S. federal trademark, valid for the whole United States of America, which may serve as a good protection and starting point for international trademark registrations. The registration starts with US $500 fee.
We help and register trademarks in Canada, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, and Carribean countries, Central America and South American countries. Various fees applies depending of the country.
We help and register trademarks in each single country of the European Union, and Europe, including the European Community Mark. Some of fastest trademark registrations may be obtained in Europe, thus preventing competitors in other countries to register the trademark by using the international priority benefits.
We register trademarks in African countries, such as Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and other 50 countries of Africa, and also with the ARIPO, the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization, thus protecting the trademark in more than 60 member countries.
We register trademarks anywhere in Asia and Australia, including New Zealand and all Australian and Asian countries.

How to start a trademark registration with the RCD Wealth?

Contact our company and let us know that you are interested in trademark registration.
You will get a consulting that is email based communication, with questions and answers, helping you design the strategy for your trademark.
We will help you, free of charge, to start protecting your trademark by creating promotional, marketing, and advertising material in time, so that you can start protecting your not yet registered trademark.
We will advise you of the fees for trademark registration in jurisdictions of your business influence and help you start registrations.
We can advise you on fastest international priority registrations.
We can register trademark holding company for you and trademarks in various jurisdictions of the world. You will be guided from start to the final result of the trademark registration.

Contact RCD Wealth now

Contact RCD Wealth now. There is a simple rule at RCD Wealth: if we can help you, we do, whenever and wherever necessary, and it's the way we've been doing business since 2002, and the only way we know