A trademark is the word, logo, or phrase that tells a buyer the goods came from you. We clear marks, register them, answer refusals, and defend them once they are yours.
Drawings from expired US patents. Lit: US 1,851,448, Oscar A. Ross, Motion Picture Camera, filed 1928, granted 1932.
Each stage has its own deadline, and the one that ends applications is the response window in stage two.
The USPTO has your filing and assigns a serial number. Examination has not started yet. Expect several months of quiet.
An examining attorney searches for conflicts and reviews your identification of goods and services. Refusals arrive at this stage.
The mark publishes for 30 days, during which anyone who believes your registration would harm them can oppose it. A potential opposer can extend that window by request, so the risk period often runs longer.
You hold a federal registration, may use the registered symbol, and gain the presumptions and remedies that come with it.
A declaration of use falls due between years five and six. After that, the year before every tenth anniversary needs a combined declaration of use and renewal. Missing a deadline opens a six-month surcharge window, and missing that cancels the registration.
01
A clearance search asks one question: can you use and register this mark for these goods without running into somebody else?
The federal register is only part of the answer. Rights also come from plain use in commerce, so a business with no registration at all can still stop you. We look at the register, at state filings, and at what is actually on the market under similar names.
The free lookup tools online check exact matches. Refusals rarely turn on exact matches. They turn on whether two marks are confusingly similar in sound, appearance, or meaning across related goods.
02
Describe your goods too narrowly and the registration protects less than your business does. Describe them too broadly and you draw a refusal, or a registration you cannot support with evidence of use.
You also cannot expand an identification after filing. It can be narrowed forever, never widened.
Government filing fees are charged per class, so class selection changes both your protection and your bill.
03
Most refusals can be answered on the merits. Bring us the letter as soon as it lands, whoever filed the application originally, because the window to respond is short.
The examining attorney found a registered mark they consider too close for related goods. Answering means arguing the differences in the marks, the goods, the channels, and the buyers, and sometimes negotiating consent from the other owner.
The mark describes a feature, quality, or purpose of the goods rather than identifying their source. The response argues distinctiveness, offers evidence of acquired meaning, or moves the application to the supplemental register.
The proof of use does not show the mark as actually used in commerce, or the identification needs amendment. These usually resolve quickly with the right substitute specimen and a clean amendment.
04
A mark only works while it points at one source, and the register does not police itself.
Monitoring catches new applications for confusingly similar marks while they are still applications, when an opposition is far cheaper than a lawsuit. It also catches sellers using your name on marketplaces, which is where most infringement of consumer brands happens.
Not every conflict deserves a demand letter. Some deserve a phone call, a coexistence agreement, or nothing at all. We help you tell them apart before you spend money.
The longer a name is in market, the more a conflict costs to fix. Bring us the mark before the packaging is printed.