Sign Texas Trademark Assignment Agreement Computer

How to document type sign trademark assignment agreement louisiana

[Music] hi everybody trademark attorney Josh gurbin and I'd like to talk a little bit about how to list your goods and services in a trademark application so one of the most critical questions in a trademark application is what are the goods and services associated with your trademark that you would like to protect and this question is so critical because it sets the right and scope for your trademark protection now a lot of people will say oh I just want to protect my trademark for everything I don't want anybody else to use my name that is just not how US trademark law works though so trademark law protects your name logo slogan your trademark as it relates to the goods or services that you provide you can have a monopoly for that but not for everything so for example you have Delta Airlines and Delta faucets right one is an airline company one's a Fossett maker you have Dove soap tub chocolate ones a chocolate maker one's a soap company so even these large companies have to share their name and you may have to share your name as well but you can expect the rights to extend to whatever you're offering and this is why when you're drafting that particular language for the trademark application you have to pay a lot of attention and you have to get it right so let's take a look at the trademark application itself here is the page where you would put in the goods or services that you're offering or plan to offer under your trademark and you can see there's a lot of text here right the USPTO has a ton of instructions and that's because this is a hyper technical part of the application that is extremely important to get right so this can be an incredibly difficult part of a trademark application to get correct here are three tips that I use to try to get the best language for any given client into their application the first is we have to start by listing the products or services you plan to offer in layman's terms this means stripping out all marketing language industry lingo and just being able to write down on a piece of paper what it is you're going to offer so if it's a clothing brand are you going to offer shirts and hats if it's jewelry will you be offering necklaces and bracelets it gets a little bit more complicated if you're offering a software program what does the software program do what are the functionalities of the software program if you're going to offer a medical service what kind of medical service so just being able to write out and understand in layman's terms the goods and services you're going to offer is an extremely important step and surprisingly difficult for a lot of companies to complete now the second rule when thinking about the goods and services you would like to include in a trademark application is to be realistic and not aspirational before a trademark registers all of the goods and services listed in the application must be actively being sold in commerce meaning you actually have to have customers or clients for this stuff so if you pack your trademark application full of hundreds of products or all these different services that someday you plan to offer that application cannot mature into a registration until you actually offer everything you've listed so it just doesn't make sense to come in there and list things that maybe someday you're going to do you really want to focus on things that are within one to a three year time frame at the most because we just don't want an application first off an application can't sit there for more than really three years they will just actually cancel out your application if you don't have sales but you can keep an application active for about three years after the initial filing so you can include things you think are going to be close in the pipeline right but you don't want to be everywhere and just throwing in things because you think someday it's a good idea be very realistic about the goods or services you're going to offer and my third and final tip is to understand that the USPTO has certain language that it will accept on how you can identify the products or services that you're going to offer and you can't just make this language up you have to meet the technical requirements that the USPTO has so you need to understand what those requirements are or you need to hire somebody that does like a trademark attorney right so I do see a lot of clients come to me and they have these marketing statements right and they're saying this is what we want to go in the application because this describes our services but getting back to my first point it really doesn't it's just marketing and industry lingo we need to use technical language that very clearly identifies what the products or services are and that language has been there's basically an entire manual of this language that the USPTO has put out that you can choose from so when you look at the manual you can go in there and you can type in certain keywords and try to find language that the PTO will accept you don't a hundred percent have to stick to this language you are allowed to create custom language but it all has to fit within certain guidelines and if it doesn't you'll receive an office action or potentially denial of your trademark application so just incredibly important to know that there's very significant technical requirements with the language that you can use in a trademark application to describe your goods and services alright so there you have it some tips on how to think about the language that you're using to describe the goods and services that go into your trademark application I know it's not the funnest topic in the world but this is critical it sets the rights and the scope for the protection you're going to receive on your brand so please pay a lot of attention to it when you're filing a trademark application I hope you found this helpful and I'll talk to you next time [Music] you