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Publish mark order

hey hey everyone welcome to this week's episode of the amazon files brought to you by mommy income i am your host kristen ostrander and i am over the moon excited about today's interview we have an amazing expert guest and lifetime born and raised kansas city chiefs fan that has nothing to do with his expertise by the way but that definitely adds to his credibility and style and preference of course because you guys know how big of a cheese fan i am and so of course it's nice to have someone in the fold with me here but that has nothing to do with his expertise he is actually a trademark attorney and the author the founder of the royal trademark law services that he has started and founded to be able to assist businesses just like yours and just like mine with us trademark registration process and of course you guys have been asking and asking all over the place to be able to you know talk with a trademark attorney and so this is our chance to be able to talk to ben and he is fantastic um his name is ben becker and he has been doing this for several years has a wonderful family and children and i'm going to let him talk a little bit about that in a minute but what i want to tell you guys first and off the bat is before we get into talking with ben why do you need a trademark for amazon why do you need brand registry for amazon why is this important at all well let me tell you this especially our wholesale bundlers you guys are basically private labeling products you're taking products that are already made and you're putting them into kits or bundles or gifts and that requires no that gives you no protection whatsoever even though you've created a listing anybody who wants to find those same exact products can jump on your listing and piggyback off of all of your hard work and all of your knowledge and all of your keyword research and the hours that you put in to create this wonderful listing um they can still hop right on and hijack your listing now if you have brand registry and you have a legitimate us trademark to get that brand registry then your hijacking friends can be kicked off in about two seconds one email one request and they are gone and so one of the things that the reason why we want a us trademark is because it is required to register your brand with amazon but why should you register your brand with amazon first of all some of you guys are like i don't have a brand i just want to do bundles so that people don't hijack my listings well i get it but there's a process to this and there's a reason why because it gives you protection not necessarily protection from people stealing your brand unless you want a household name which we'll talk to bet about um but the reality here is that it protects you on amazon and gives you more privileges not just brand registry like hey i've got my own brand but it gives you ability to add video it gives you ability to add testimonials more pictures more description and of course branding so you can put your own logos your own branding you can customize your storefront on amazon with your own products even if you sell baby goods and car parts you are still able to put your branding on things and then represent your brand on amazon where no one else can take that little corner piece of the pie that amazon's giving you and all it takes is i know i make it sound so easy right ben's probably laughing at me but the reality is all it takes is a us trademark and then brand registry and you need to have one in order to get the other which is why we are welcoming wonderful ben becker to show ben can you join me hey gotta love that chiefs logo right i'm so excited that you just you know you're such a huge fan as well i love that so um a little bit about yourself why don't you tell everybody a little bit about you sure uh as you mentioned i'm kansas city born and raised die hard chiefs and royals fans so that that game recently was a little bit of a heart attack you know hope that holmes is doing well and everything but as you mentioned i am a trademark attorney i work with clients businesses entrepreneurs who are wanting to grow and protect their brands both on amazon and just kind of out there in general commerce i really enjoy kind of working with people and seeing what they do because i mean especially since the invention of the side hustle everybody's doing something different and unique and so it's really fun for me to meet these people and see what they do and then lend my expertise to to help them grow and build their own brands and kind of achieve those those new markets or new milestones that they have um and as you mentioned a big part of getting your own business going is the u.s trademark registration and protections that it offers and so i'm really happy to help uh and really enjoy kind of educating people about what those protections are and how they go to go about throughout the application process so i'm really excited to lend whatever knowledge i can to to you and all of your your listeners and answer any questions that they have awesome well i have brought a few of the questions that a lot of people have asked me over you know the last couple of years i know i did a little bit of a mini training on kind of how to do it yourself but even there's so many people questioning even that process people getting nervous so what are your recommendations when it comes to kind of doing it yourself or you know working with an attorney i would equate it to doing taxes everybody can do it themselves unless you live outside the united states and in that case the uspto actually requires you to work with an attorney but for all of these those of you living in the united states you can do it yourself you just have to get a uspto account and then go through the the process of filling out the application that being said much like taxes there are a lot of nuances to both identifying potential conflicts for your brand and then in the application making sure that you're provide providing all the correct information and in the correct format and way um so if you have any questions i would i would definitely recommend working with an attorney if for no other reason then the uspto process is not short if you file an application and you have no problems and it goes through the the process as quickly as it can you're still looking at about 8 to 12 months and for a business that's a lifetime so if something happens and you have to restart the process that's just setting yourself back enormously if you're if you're waiting for that registry from the us in order to take that to you know amazon for example so i would recommend do to work with the professional who knows what they're doing to help prevent you know having to restart the process but as you said there are many people who have succeeded in doing it themselves and there's nothing preventing those of you in the united states from doing that well and i can lend my own issues with that as well i actually have one trademark that we did do ourselves and we filled everything out and it was something that was kind of an acronym so there was nothing that really anyone was going to be contesting and there was it's just kind of a low risk um you know bizarre kind of a thing that we were trying to get trademarked and we had actually no hiccups whatsoever doing all that however um as you know because yes i am working with ben on my second trademark after we did try to do it ourselves and made too many mistakes and just had some some issues that we were way above our heads so we are very happy to be working with professionals like i said you might be able to watch a youtube video and do some plumbing on your own but it's way better to just hire a professional because just in case right yep yep definitely so i know that a lot of people are you know as i was you know with the introduction and everything a lot of our clients and people looking to file trademarks are doing it specifically for just getting that brand approval on amazon so most of them are doing a generalized you know word mark that they're applying for so um can you go over just some of the basic requirements of applying for a word mark sure so first off you have to have your mark and choosing a mark obviously you'd want to be as distinct and unique as possible in order to both develop your brand and brand recognition but also to help it move through the u.s registration process as easily as possible for the application itself it's it's fairly straightforward but it depends on the the type of application that you file and for those of you who don't understand what i'm talking about there are two two different forms you can fill out an intent to use form or a use in commerce and that's just saying the difference between hey i plan on selling this or selling products with this mark in the future or i am doing it actively at the time of application submittal if you're doing an intent to use application you just need your name contact information you cannot use a po box or any kind of forwarding service you also have to provide phone number and email and all of that information becomes public so if you don't want to use your home address just keep that in mind and take whatever necessary steps you need to to get a different address for that then you need the mark itself if you're doing a word mark i would recommend you just do a standard characters if you do standard characters then the us protects all stylized variations of that so coca-cola has their coca-cola mark but then they have the stylized lettering that you would recognize on the can but just doing standard mark protects anything you could think of after that you're great to know no i was just saying that's great to know just because um you know i know there's been some confusion about like well if you submit it with a specific font and style are you protected on that or can people use it so that's good because then it kind of covers all bases yeah yeah i would highly recommend even if you are planning on using some kind of stylization to your mark uh submit it as standard characters in that way yeah if you want to rebrand in the future or you know redo your your presentation in the future you're not held up by any you know additional requirements for filing um after that for the intent to use you just have to pay the the filing fee it would be you know right now they just left their prices it was it's now 250 per class of good or service that you file under so an easy way to think about that is toys are one class of good clothes are a second class of goods so if you're filing in both of those then you would have a total application fee of 500 you submit that and then it starts it through the process now for an intent to use application you will eventually have to show that you are actually using the mark before the uspto will register that mark and issue the certificate that you need for a brand registry to do that you have to file what's called a statement of use or allegation of use and that's where you show them hey i've got a website i'm selling this product hey i'm up on amazon here's my links to my page here's my brand name and the products that i'm selling now your products have to be whatever you claim on your trademark application in order to gain the appropriate protections so if you are selling if you claim toys and clothes but then you send the uspto a picture of your brand on food you're not going to be able to prove to them that you're using your mark in commerce with the appropriate classes so just keep that in mind or a so i was just gonna say that's an excellent thing and and is it helpful um one way or the other as far as like getting the actual approval you know albeit everything else lines up but is it easier to get approval for something you're already using rather than what you intend to use it speeds up the process it because for a use in commerce application you submit that proof the date that you submit your the rest of your application so all the other other items that i mentioned the contact information mark et cetera so what it does is it gives you more time it doesn't necessarily make it easier or faster or more likely to register or anything like that if you do a use in commerce versus an intent to use intent to use really just kind of gets your foot in the door kind of bookmark saves your spot so that you know if you're not 100 ready to go you'd need a couple months or something to get ready but you want to make sure you have that protection and are getting that process started given that it is such a long process it's good to do that intent to use at the beginning the other caveat to that would be that second filing that allegation of use costs an additional hundred dollars per class of goods so if you're filing in four classes that's an additional 400 that you need to give to the uspto sometime down the road so just another piece to consider now i know that there's been tons of questions and confusion about the classes by which you register under the us trademark versus what amazon's requirements are and i know the amazon's requirements are to have a registered trademark in at least one class but they're not particular about which class or which product so for example you're using toys and clothing if i register in the clothing category with the the us trademark and then i use that on amazon i actually can use my trademark to list in any category i choose as long as i have that registration and amazon verifies that my exact brand is the exact brand i'm using on amazon they are very indifferent of which categories you file in so that being said um what do you what do you what is your recommendation for the class in which you're filing for um for the us piece if you're only going to choose one class what is your what are your thoughts on that uh i would say that if amazon is going to let you do it then that is that's great and that's something that you should take advantage of with this in mind the protections that you get are limited to whatever you put at least at the with the federal government the protections that you get are limited to exactly what's in your application so if you put in clothes on your application but then you start selling food or or something else that's not in that same class you cannot uh with the federal government at least then go after somebody who starts using your mark to sell whatever that other item might be the other item or the other piece i would add to that to keep in mind is that your protections and your rights to that trademark are limited to the items that you're selling so if you go in and start selling clothes and then a copycat starts selling the wealth apartment you go and start selling clothes and toys and then a copycat takes your brand name and they start selling toys also um you can't stop them at with the federal courts but you can be um they can come after you if they get if they go to the uspto and they get registered in toys they can come after you at the federal level and say hey wait a minute he's infringing or he or she is infringing on my mark in this category so you're you're outside of your limits of protection there's the uspto won't won't um save you since you have a registration and clothing if somebody else comes after you when you're ready when they're registered in the additional classes if that makes sense it was a little convoluted so if i yeah kind of i'm like i know you can probably see the looking face like wait a second so if you have your mark in clothing and you're protected in that but then you also sell toys under that same mark and someone else then does then they could come after you even though you're registered in one category but not another so um you know this i know for a lot of amazon sellers you know this is something we're just clearing the air about because we want to make sure that everybody understands um the risks and the rewards of doing one or the other but the reality is i mean even using mommy income as a trademark you know if i have a trademark in my service based businesses and then i go and make you know t-shirts or something and that's not a registered class then technically speaking i don't have protection under that because i registered as a service and now i'm selling products with my brand name so i don't know how that all works i'm sure that's a whole different conversation but that's kind of the just of it a little bit yeah yeah and and as you said we we can get into a related classes and how that plays into things but that is a little bit more in the weeds and i'd you know be happy to discuss it further with anybody who has specific questions about like services kind of thing okay um so are there certain things that do actually increase your chances of being approved or is it really just following the letter of the law there's nothing necessarily on your application other than providing all of the appropriate information in the correct manners but conflict research is really your best your best tool for ensuring that you are are going to get registered with the uspto and i say that because if you spend you know or if you have a qualified professional who's familiar with the area if they spend two hours looking through your brands and all the potential conflicts that could be either on the uspto database or out in social media or out just in google that aren't you know there's a lot of people doing a lot of different things that aren't necessarily going through the trademark process so if you do that conflict research you are at least made aware of all of those potential issues before you get going and that way you can identify hey you know this mark has a lot of potential issues that might either kill it totally and have me make me go all the way back to beginning or it'll just make it more difficult and then draw out the process whereas this other mark that you know it's maybe not my favorite mark but it's way more likely to get registered because it's more unique and distinct and less likely to be confusing or similar to someone else's that one is going to get pushed through faster and you identify that process up front so you save yourself a minimum of three months there and i say three months is because from the date your application is submitted until the uspto looks at it is three months there's nothing that happens in between so if you identify through conflict research those issues early then establish one the filing fee and then to whatever time you you think into the application process awesome yeah yeah that's good to know i know some people try to think of like is there anything that can improve your chances and really it's the uniqueness of your brand and making sure that you know you're not making up something similar and most people just they they think they came up with a great unique idea and upon research shows them quickly that you know 10 other people have thought of the very thing that they're thinking of and so that is really helpful to be able to i mean and honestly i've done many quick searches on the uspto website where you can literally type in a name and think it's unique and then realize 12 other people have the same exact idea so that's something you can initially do everyone going to the uspto and doing a quick search if you've got something in mind if nothing comes up you're you know that's that's just another level of research it doesn't mean you're out of the woods and you've got a great idea it means that there's just nothing imminent and you have to dig way deeper to make sure okay so another thing is like what have you found to be um keeping all of this in mind i know we've talked about big brands like you know coca-cola is a household name it has been for nearly a century and you know these other things but you know a lot of the amazon customers are like i don't i'm not interested in being a household name i really don't think anybody's gonna try to sue me or i'm gonna have to go after anybody for copying my brand i just want you know this kind of protection and got to kind of sneak through the door but can you talk a little bit about the true benefits of having a registered trademark even if for only amazon sellers sure um so the biggest uh benefit i can tell you is is peace of mind um and i say that for a couple of reasons the first one being if you have your own registered trademark and you're operating in your your registered areas your protected areas classes nobody can come after you and say you know 10 years down the road hey you know you're imprinting on our mark we're going to take you to court unless you give us all of your profits for the last 10 years you stop using this in all you know every marketplace and you immediately rebrand and that that just gives you the idea of hey you know what i'm set i'm good to go there's nothing else i have to worry about in terms of somebody coming after me unless you're doing something kind of untold or or questionable and in which case you should know those risks getting into it secondly it gives you the peace of mind that there's somebody out there kind of watching your back and i say that for the uspto and they're not necessarily actively protecting your brand per se but through the registration process they're identifying people or applications that are too similar to yours and they're not letting them register so that process alone given that amazon is requiring brain registry filters out a lot of potential competition for amazon sellers without them having to do anything actively as long as you get your mark and you're you're keeping your mark updated at the uspto's office they're doing some work for you on the back end the other side of that that i would say is peace of mind in that you may not think you want to be a household brand currently but if you start doing really well and for whatever reason you decide that you know what i've i've made it i'm comfortable and i want to sell off my brand the trademark is a good asset to have it shows that your your mark is is recognized it shows that you have kind of a piece of the market it's good to show potential investors and it it also lets your customers know that hey this is somebody i trust uh if i have never tried you know this brand of uh pullover but i see a nike logo on it i know it's quality i know it's something that i uh at least you know if i'm paying 80 bucks for it i know why i know where that's coming from i know the source of it kind of the quality behind it if it's another brand name that is completely different to me i might try it but if i don't have something that i can then refer back to or recognize that i'm not helping that brand out because i'm i can't refer people to it so um it just gives you kind of some some behind the scenes help in monitoring your brand but it also gives you some kind of out in the marketplace um marketing that you're not necessarily actively doing customers can do it for you yeah that's great you know that's a great thing and again like we never none of us really ever know we think we might just be selling something on amazon but we have no idea if we hit a sweet spot in the marketplace and all of a sudden we do really well it's really hard to scramble after the fact you know when we have a plan moving forward even if it takes a year you can start using it now and you can start the process now and then a year from now you'll either have a trademark or you won't and you you're you're gonna have to go through the process either way but the protections on amazon and the only other thing i can add to that really is the fact that since i've had brand registry on amazon i have had zero problems with getting i i you don't have to get gtin exemptions you don't even actually have to have upc codes for your product anymore because your you have reached a level level with amazon of legitimacy because they know they know how long and how legitimate this process is because anything that has to do with the federal government number one is always going to take lots of time and number two it's a legitimate at the federal level so amazon's recognizing that this is also you know some people are like oh this brand registry and why does it have to be all these bells and whistles it's for us actually it's our protection to the fact that we know that if we see somebody that has brand registry on amazon we know that they all had to go no matter how big or small their trademark no matter how big or small their company they had to go through the very same price process little me had to go through in order to get this one trademark registered so we don't have our you know for lack of a better example we don't have a lot of the cheap chinese manufacturers just jumping in and registering brands with amazon because they didn't go through that process so no matter how much money you have you still can't buy your trademark you have to go through the same process as everyone else and so there's this protection there that even if you're not a household name you also get special privileges on amazon to be able to beef up your listings you also get these wonderful branding reports that every single thing you have on there it even shows you your top competitors and how you can improve your listings to compete against them so there is so much more to brand registry but getting that trademark is the number one essential piece to the pie and of course our wonderful friends ben and his team are able to help you so ben can you tell them what's the best way for them to get a hold of you so they can start their trademark process i'd be happy to you can go to royaltrademarklaw.com and on there you'll see uh contact information or you can reach out to me at b becker that's b as in boy b-e-c-k-e-r becker at royaltrademarklaw.com i'd be happy to answer any questions that people have and kind of work through the registration process with them as well awesome and yeah you guys you know that the all the stuff will be in the show notes as well so if you guys are listening and walking the dog you're like wait i gotta write that down don't worry it's on the show notes of course you can always reach out to any of us at mommy income to get more information on how to talk with ben and his team um i know that they provide like flat rate packages for for different legal services they'll help you with the process they'll even help answer some questions after being through the process twice now um and once by myself and and do it yourself type of thing and then also with um the help of wonderful attorneys i cannot suggest highly enough that you use professional help with this and the reason i say that is because if you're like me and you start ringing legalese and your eyes glaze over like you're reading greek or chinese um that same exact thing has happened to me i get this office action response and i'm like what does this mean i don't know that's not my expertise or my wheelhouse just like i would look at plumbing and call a plumber you look at legal documents and you hire the appropriate people um the what what i want to just say last to everyone listening is this is an investment that you're making in your business and you know i know ben that you mentioned about it being an asset i recently had our business um evaluated by a potential investor and a potential purchaser just for fun just to see what they would evaluate the business as and that was one of the top things that they asked and actually verified do you have any us trademarks and are you using them and we did and we have and they said that that ups the value of our business by at least 30 percent because it's something that's a process legally that we went through that then no one can take from you and so it's one of those things that regardless if you think you're using xyz imports or some crazy thing that makes no difference to anyone else if you somehow come up with one of those products that ends up being you know kind of a home run that you never anticipated it's something that you already have in your back pocket and it's really not like like ben said it's really not that expensive even for two classes you know 500 plus you know some helpful attorney fees you're talking about protecting your business for i mean how long does one trademark last before you have to re re-up it yeah so your your first your first filing is two years and then it's every eight to nine years after that and as long as you're doing the maintenance trademarks never expire they they never go away and and you can assign them to new people new businesses so they are very much something that is an investment in your company one question that actually just came to mind that that as we were talking is say you register in one class to start do you have to start all over to register a second third or fifth class yes so it depends on where you're at in the process uh for a limited time frame you can pay additional filing fees to add additional classes to your to your application but if you've gotten through so there are various stages in the application the first is the attorney review at the uspto the second is what they call a publish for opposition so they have a trademark gazette they publish all approved marks for for anybody to go in and look at and say hey wait a minute they look like they're similar to my mark and they're still on the same products i don't want them to get registered so after that position that opposition period ends you would not be able to add any further classes because the uspto would consider that it kind of cheating the system essentially by allowing the opposition to close and and potential businesses not not thinking you're competing with them all of a sudden having that additional class added so kind of you have about three months after your application is submitted to do additional classes after that period you'd have to do a new application okay sure and i'm thinking even after that doing an application for however many more that you might have added at that point generally speaking if you're picking up a pretty unique mark anyhow you're not going to have any opposition so it hopefully it will you know kind of transpire that way so great this has been such great information again i know all of the mommy income listeners the amazon files listeners we do have a training talking about um creating your brand brand packaging and and the initial preparations that you need to make in order to get a trademark so going through that training is helpful but it is not the be all catch-all for all of us again our recommendations is always to contact a professional like ben and his team to be able to help you with that because let's be honest we're good at e-commerce we're good at entrepreneurship we're not attorneys and that's why we have to leave the good stuff to the people who who deserve to work on it and have earned their right in the space so thank you ben so much for coming on and sharing your expertise again you guys you can find him at royaltrademarklaw.com you can email them all the stuff will be in the show notes to be able to um reach out to him and his team and even if you just have inquiry questions and you're moving forward with it their their team is excellent there and they'll be happy to help you again thanks ben so much go chiefs and um same time same place next week on the amazon files take care thank you