eSignature Legality for Trademark Assignment Agreement in United States

How to eSign a document: eSignature legality for Trademark Assignment Agreement in United States

this is attorney El withth pots Weinstein and this is a tutorial for how to file a special form trademark application with United States patent and trademark office in other words how to file a trademark on your logo where your trademark is not just a word or maybe doesn't contain any words at all but it is of a design so in this I'm going to file a pretend application like I'm not going to hit the very final button but you're going to follow along with me as I go through all the steps also in this I'm assuming you actually don't have the business launched it so you haven't made any money yet so it's also going to be an attent to use application so follow along with me and we'll see how it goes the first step is go to uspto.gov and which is where you do a trademark application go to trademarks and then go to the apply online this is where you're going to get all the different forms this includes all the other forms you'll file in the future you also go here to find those forms now obviously the website may change in the future but I'm thinking this will be a good place that will still exist no matter when you're watching this video all right you scroll down and you get to initial application forms now there's two different forms you can use te a plus and the standard if you can use the plus you want to use it because your trim mil will get is more likely to get approved and will get approved faster from my experience however sometimes you can't use the standard also by the way the plus is cheaper so saving money always a good thing now I'm going to assume that you're going to be able to file it with ta+ and that's what we're going to be using typically when you're not able to do that is because you can't pick a class of that is or in the database which I'll show you about how that works so let's just assume you can do the plus and if you can't you have to do the standard so you start your application the first step is you have to sign in now if you have not created a login you're going to have to do that you're have to create a login and you're going have to use the id.me to verify yourself also you can only file your own trademark application if you reside in the United States so other you don't have to deal with that you have to hire a lawyer if you're going to if you're not in the United States but I'm going to assume you're in the United States and then we're going to go ahead and sign in so give me a sec to do that okay signed in and now we go to the application now I'm going to be filling it out as if I'm not a lawyer like it's for my own business and I'm not and I'm just doing it myself so that's how I'm going to select everything so they has all kinds of things that talk about how this application works you can save the application partway through and then it gives you like little thing that you can use to reload your application that's what you would put in down here if a file if you want to reload everything that you save so that is something that is possible to do also this is a dynamic form so the things that you select changes what the screen is so it will reload with new things okay all right so we're going to assume we can do the ta+ right now and is an attorney Fess application no because I'm filing it for myself all right so now we click the next box now you put in you stuff about yourself the owner of the mark so here I'm going to put the name of my media company that owns all my YouTube stuff and that's just as an example of something that you could do if you have an LLC so ew media LLC obviously don't put my business's name put your name so you but if you're doing as an individual you would put your own name but if you have an LLC or Corporation you put the LLC and then if you're doing individual it'll repopulate it with what is your citizen sh and if you do an LLC for example or Corporation or anything like that it'll populate it with what is the jurisdiction where it was formed this was formed in New Mexico okay and then here you put the mailing address for the business so I'm going to go in here I'm actually going to put the mailing address for my Law Firm CU that is nonpublic all right so here the domicile address if your business has a physical location or office or what ever where there's people and that's where the officers work the employees work then you put then you leave this box checked because this address is your actual address of your business your mailing address but if your mailing address and your actual physical location is different then you have to uncheck this box now if you actually don't have an address because you have a business that is completely online or it will be completely online you have to put the address of the owner and why is that even if you have an LLC or Corporation the trademark office has has to know where you are domiciled where you're actually located because if you're located in the United States you can file your own trimmer application if you're located outside the United States you have to have a lawyer who is a US lawyer to help you they have that rule because they had a lot of problems with fraud and statistically speaking it was mostly from outside the United States now it's kind of a ridiculous rule but here it is it's the rule so you have to deal with it so here my LLC does not have a physical address like an inperson place it is a YouTube business okay so I'm going to put my actual address and then but I'm going to make up an address right now cuz I'm I'm not going to record that on here so let's just say I live at 123 Main Street in San Francisco California 9410 that is a San Francisco address here I'm checking this because as the LLC the LLC I'm the owner of it and this is my house it's actually a madeup address but we're just going to assume that's my house Elizabeth pots Weinstein owner I can also put member president whatever is your office that you have for the business you do not have to put a phone number I haven't had the trademark office call me in many many years such that I can't remember but you do have to put an email address this will be publicly available and you have to have this is how they're going to communicate with you so I'm actually going to put my law firm's address just because you're all are seeing this website address this is a really good idea to do if you have your website already launched because they're going to Google this trademark to see if anybody else is already using it and you want them to know that it's you that is this website right but let's say I haven't launched I don't have a website yeah I don't have a domain yet nothing all right then we hit continue now here is where we put the information about the mark this is the big thing that's different for a special form in other words for logo here you colle click instead of standard characters which is like Words letters you hit special form and then a whole another thing loads up all right so the first thing is we have to attach the Lo so here's the thing you have an option of your logo being in black and white and then you're not protecting the color and then you can use different colors or having your logo be in the colors so here's my recommendation generally if you literally only use the logo in the colors the colors are really part of the brand then it makes sense to do that but if you change the colors up depending upon what you're doing then you definitely want to do the Black and White Version now they don't want you to do gray scale they want you to do black and white this is a whole thing and you need to make sure that actually is black and white the logo submit you file so in this case I'm going to do a black and white version this is a logo that I don't actually use it's just like something I found on my computer now I'm showing this to you so here's just this really simple generic logo that I got that I like got used some app to make now this is in black and white okay it has a it has a clear or it has a transparent background and this is though a PNG file typically when you get a logo file created by somebody or by AI or whatever it is or an app or something the it will be a PNG file because that is a vector based I think and so it scales really well but you can't do that with the trademark office because they're not really forward in that way you have to have it as a JPG so I'm going to take this and literally just in preview I'm going to export it as a JPG file and save it in the exact same place all right great now if you don't do that I'm going to show you what happens if you do it wrong so let's say I forget and I do a PNG file instead I try to attach it what happens is is you get an error message and you're going to see this error message as soon as it actually loads the trademark office gets like the the app for the Trademark Office sometimes takes a long time to churn so you just have to be patient and occasionally is down not very often actually but occasionally it's down so right now it's probably getting very upset that I submitted a PNG file bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum okay I actually like completely would not even processess so we're going to do that again but now we're going to go in here and do jpg and you're going to attach it now let's see if it gives us an air okay that the pixel count is outside the recommended range it wants it to be 944 pixels this is 1200 by 1200 okay I'm just going to tell you I always ignore this ER now is that a good idea I don't know but I'm I'm just I I never you know deal with that so we're just going to continue okay it actually did some weird thing with it but when it displays it here but it is it is saved correctly all right so for any image that also includes words letters punctuation enter the little element so here it has epw right the color is not being claimed here so we're just leaving that blank this part cuz and then here check only if you believe the and after you s clicking the continue button you got a warning otherwise you don't need to click this so typically this happens is if the system thinks that you submitted a file that wasn't black and white it'll give you an error and then you click this otherwise you don't need to click that box all right now we're going to add a complete and accurate description for of all literal elements and Design Elements so here's the thing if you don't do this quite right CU I'm always kind of guessing trying to figure out what how to describe it they will give you a what they think it it should be and then you can accept whether or not you think it is so you want to try to describe what this is all right so let's go ahead and look at the thing so we're going to say the letters epw in surrounded one one in a circle surrounded by 1 2 3 4 Centric circles I don't know if they would accept this to be honest but it it's it is kind of a place to start and and I've typically will have to write things about you know I clients have things with angels and wings and with houses and with fruit and with all these things and I have to come up with some kind of description about these things and about clouds in the sky and all this you have to kind of have some words about each element and where it is spatially in relationship you do the best job that you can all right so I'm going to hit continue also here's a bunch of additional statements so these additional statements most of the time won't come up for you but occasionally it will one that comes up a lot is consent of an IND idual identified in the mark so here epw H I'm actually not 100% sure if I have to I would have to identify that in the mark it is my initials I just wanted to look up what the rule was I was like if you just have initials does it matter no okay if it's just the initials it's so it's full name first name only nickname stage name title pseudonym surname only realistic likeness or portrait but for me this is just initials so I don't have to do that and this is the thing is look up these rules all the time CU I'm just like what is the rule on that so if I had something that was Elizabeth pots Weinstein which I actually do own the trademark for Elizabeth pot Weinstein then I would have to do a consent which I did but we're not doing that all right continue warning um okay I get this whole time it doesn't like the commas that I use whatever I just it's always like some weird punctuation now we're going to add the goods and services so this is where it pushes you over to a dat database of all the goods and services so a trademark is not just a trademark for every time anyone uses that word in the whole world it is for that particular category of that particular industry so here you're putting things like shoes for example shoes are in here as well as all different kinds of shoes dog shoes are different than human shoes you could put in here stickers that's in a different class okay but here I'm going to put legal services I don't know if it's called Legal servic is that right Legal Services okay there's all different kind of legal services they're all the same class of class 45 and let's say I'm going to do just going to do Legal Services that's easy and then we click the box for the thing that we want and we insert those entities okay let's say you get here and you realize oh I actually want two things I want legal services and t-shirts which you I don't know who wants that but then you go and add another one and then here you leave that box checked and then you put t-shirt and then you do t-shirts insert checked entities okay so then you have all the different classes you added and by the way every time you have another class another numbered class it makes the fee go up another time so 250 to 500 to 750 to 1,000 for everything that you file pretty much with the trademark office so don't add to gazillion classes unless you really strategically are wanting to do that so here then I can do the I can assign the filing basis so most of the time 44d and 44e areer if you basing it off a foreign application or a foreign um trademark so most people aren't going to be doing that 1 a and 1B are the ones that are typically going to come up 1 a is you already using in Commerce and that doesn't mean that you have a website or social media you have to be monetizing money has to be made in some way shape or form it can be from ads or sponsors it can be from selling products selling services but money money needs to be happening you have to have the data for sale and you have to have a like screenshot or flyer or photo of the product or the service or whatever it is in conjunction with the tradear now here I'm going to say it's intent to use which is 1B this is I haven't launched the business yet haven't monetized so this is what I plan to do so there I would click 1B and it's going to pop up and say you really want to do this and because you have to actually have an attent otherwise it's you know you're doing something fraudulent this isn't a penalty of perjury you really have to intent to be doing this and you have to know that it's going to be more fees because when you file the allegation of use the statement of use later saying that you actually launched it made money you got to pay more money so yep I understand that so I'm going to assign the filing basis okay great now one thing just a future I idea for about t to use if you're going to have two different Services two different classes and one of them you're going to launch next week and one you're going to launch in 3 years I actually would file them in two separate applications the fee is the same because you to pay per class anyway so I would personally do that because otherwise later you'll have to split them and the fee to split them cost a lot so I file them separate applications if you're not going to be launching them around the same time all right so if but if it's one if it's one numbered class and a whole lot of things that's just one fee you've had t-shirts and hoodies and shoes those are all in the same clothing class and so that's just the 250 okay all right so another thing I just want to BR bring up about the logo that I didn't talk about in the beginning that is that you are only filing it on that exact logo you change something you change the font you change the way it's arranged you change the color if you filed it with a color you got to start all over again with the new application because it's only for that exact design okay so you need to be committed cuz I've had a lot of people run into that problem where they change things it's like we got start all over again all right now we're going to continue now this is the correspondence information okay so this is what address extra email address can I use and here I actually will usually I'm not going to do it right now I put my personal Gmail address so that way if my work email doesn't work then it'll go I'll get a courtesy copy to my own self but I'm not going to do that right now all right so here you have two classes so it's a total of $500 you're going to sign this directly cuz you're doing this so you can just sign yourself this is the Declaration now a declaration is a penalty of pury everything in this has to be true so you should read this that you're believe that you're the owner that it you intend to use it or it wasn't used already which depends on the kind of thing you filed everything that you stated to your knowledge is correct that there isn't anybody else who has this already to your knowledge that everything you said is evidentiary support and that you understand the c a penalty of perjury and lying is a crime and then you sign it you can just sign it with your initials that's what I usually do the date sign will automatically populate your name goes in here not my name your name and then your position so I in here am the owner of the LLC so put owner and then your phone number I think you actually have to no you actually can don't have to put this so it doesn't have a little if it has a red star you it's required just like how most websites that is so I'm going to validate that okay now here what I recommend you want to check everything make sure you did it right so if you rightclick on input and open it up into a new tab then it'll open up everything that you already filed so it has the mark it has your mailing address the information about the owner the do asile address the class everything and you want to make sure that is all correct you don't have a typo or something and if you do what you do is you go back here and you go back to modify and you just go back go back go back to wherever it was and then you can modify that and go forward okay then here you click this and this is about yes you're going to pay for it after this is the payment screen so the thing that's very important to know is if they deny your trademark or you don't want to have it after all you never get a refund this is it you're filing it the money money's in there also the stuff in your application is not confidential now the domicile is supposed to be confidential and only the trimmer office has access to it it's not in the public database but of course anything can be but the rest of the information your email address all that stuff is not confidential and so it's just something to be aware of that that is going to be out there in a publicly available database so the next thing you do is hit click that box and hit pay submit when you're ready you could also save the form there if you're not ready to to do it yet and then it's going to go into a whole entire new system that is the payment system when know you put in a credit card uh or you might be able to put in a debit card too I think but and this is going to take a while to load so we're obviously I'm not going to pay for this made out trademark application so if you're filing for a trademark application on a logo like I said you need to be committed to that logo because it's only for that exact logo now I did this as an intent to use application so if you are actually using it then you would submit the date of first sale and you would date of first sale date of first monetization you know whatever however you're making money on it and you would submit a like screenshot of the website or the social media site or a copy of your flyer or a photo of the product with the label on it some of evidence that's your specimen to show that you are using it in Commerce in that class all right so if you have any questions about your trademark application that you're trying to file with the United States patent and trademark off office for your logo or other kind of design feel free to leave them in the comments below and I'll try to point you in the right direction thumbs up subscribe talk to you all later bye-bye