How To Register Something As A Service Mark

A service mark protects the words and symbols you use to identify your business, including names, logos and slogans. Service marks are identical to trademarks, except that service marks are used to identify services you provide, while trademarks are used for products. Learn more than about service marks and the specific steps required by the registration process.

Trademarks and service marks are words, phrases, sounds or symbols that place your business organisation and distinguish information technology from other businesses. If you utilize your marker for products that you lot sell, it's a trademark. If you use it for services that y'all provide, it'south a service marking. Sometimes people apply the word "trademark" to refer to both trademarks and service marks.

How do you know if you're providing products or services? Services are things that you practise for other people, such as preparing revenue enhancement returns or giving golf lessons. Products are items that you sell, such as revenue enhancement grooming software or golf clubs.

Why Register a Service Mark?

Service Marks receive common law trademark protection if yous use them in your business concern. Just this protection is weak and doesn't ordinarily extend beyond your firsthand geographic area. If another business organisation then uses your mark, it can be hard to prove that you lot have a superior right to apply it.

Many states offer service mark registration, but state registration will non protect yous if an out-of-country business organisation begins using your mark.

Registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Role (USPTO) gives you nationwide service marking protection, creates a public record of your mark, allows you lot to sue in federal court for trademark infringement, and can make it easier to obtain trademark protection in another country.

The steps required for registering a service mark are specified below; because of the details involved, it may be wise to consider using a third-party registration service.

Steps to Service Marking Registration

Step 1: Carry a Service Mark Search

Yous tin can't register a service mark if someone else is already using a deceptively similar marking for the aforementioned type of services. A mark is deceptively similar if it looks or sounds like an existing mark, then that a consumer might be confused about the source of the services.

The USPTO has an online Trademark Electronic Search System, or TESS, that is used to search for like service marks. LegalZoom's comprehensive trademark search includes options that can search federal, state, common law and international databases and place potential conflicts.

Step two: Complete the Service Mark Awarding

To fill out the service marker application, you'll demand this data:

The proper noun of the service mark's owner and an accost for correspondence.
The blazon of mark you are registering: a standard character mark, a special graphic symbol mark, or a sound mark. A standard grapheme mark protects a group of letters or words in any form you choose to display them, while a special character format protects your mark in the exact mode and color y'all specify.
The blazon of services your mark is used for. You'll only have service mark protection for the type of services y'all place.
A film and specimen of your mark. A picture shows what your marker looks like by itself. Yous'll too demand a specimen, such every bit a brochure or a sign, that shows how you are using your service mark.

Step three: Submit the Service Marker Application and Pay the Filing Fee

If you submit your application electronically, you lot'll pay $225-$325 per class of services registered (as of Jan 2016). Mail service registrations are more expensive, at $375 per class of services.

Step 4: Respond Promptly to Correspondence from the Trademark Part

Your awarding volition exist assigned to an examining attorney at the USPTO. If there are questions or bug, yous may receive a letter of the alphabet known equally an Office Activeness. It's important to respond to an Office Action within the deadline contained in the letter. If y'all don't, your application could exist denied.

To register a trademark or service marker, it'southward important to carry a thorough trademark search and submit a complete and accurate application. If your application is denied, you won't get your filing fee back.

If yous're gear up to register a trademark or service marker, LegalZoom can help. Get started by answering a few questions. We'll work with you to assemble your trademark awarding and behave a trademark search. So, we'll file your completed application with the USPTO.