Avoid these 4 trademark mistakes

Ready to avoid the most popular trademark mistakes?

There’s something special about naming something. And when that thing is your own business, it’s particularly exciting.

Think about how far you’ve come as a business owner. All those long hours spent working on something that you couldn’t wait to share with the world. Then, after brainstorming a bunch of possible business names, you come up with a name that really captures the essence of your vision.

The feedback is amazing — people *love* the name. You snag the website, get a logo, and you’re helping customers before you know it.

Can I just say . . . the fact that you’ve gotten here . . . it’s pretty awesome.

Seriously, you had the guts to start your own freaking business. And now you’re gaining the experience and skills to really grow this brand.

When your business is your baby.

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you put quite a bit of time into what you named the business. It’s only natural to feel a kind of emotional attachment to the name you chose. I mean, you pretty much “birthed” your brand.

What you might not know, though, is just how exposed your brand is if you don’t have certain trademark protections in place.

Why do trademarks matter?

Look, I get it. You want to build your business the right way. You want to keep things legit. At the same time, you want to be mindful with your expenses and not spend money on things the business doesn’t really need.

It’s only natural for you to be asking yourself: “Why would I need a trademark?”

Trademark issues tend to get overlooked by business owners. With everything else going on — from marketing to bookkeeping to customer support — it’s easy to move trademarks to the bottom of your business to-do list.

But here’s the problem.

There are now over 300 million businesses operating around the world, with more being created every day.

Entrepreneurship is booming.

This means more and more people are calling dibs on various business names, slogans, logans, product lines, podcast titles, you name it.etc.

In short, we are literally running out of brand names. 

Now listen. If you haven’t really given trademarks much thought up to this point, that doesn’t make you a bad business owner.

But I would love to give you a deeper sense of clarity and peace of mind on trademarks. As a trademark lawyer who has helped thousands of business owners, I’ve seen a lot. My clients — like you — are building pretty cool brands, and they really appreciate being guided around common trademark traps.

It’s really common these days to run into branding problems totally unprepared.

It could be a competitor who starts using a suspiciously similar business name. Or a bigger company that sends you a cease and desist letter accusing you of infringement due to your new podcast. Or a business coach telling you that you just said something catchy and should protect it. At the heart of the problem is trademarks.

So you do you need a trademark? Maybe, maybe not. But you DO need to understand the basics of how US trademark laws work, or else you’re asking for problems down the road.

Click below for an inside scoop on what *really* matters when it comes to trademarks.