Speaker 1: Hey everyone, so in today's video, I'm going to be showing you how to really affordably file a trademark. I've done a lot of research on this topic, and this is by far one of the most affordable ways to set up your trademark. And yeah, it's actually a lot more affordable than you'd think. Okay, so first of all, what is a trademark? A trademark is a sign that separates a company's goods or services of one enterprise from those of another enterprise. The trademark can be a word, a phrase, letter, number, picture element, 3D form, or a combination of these elements. So there are three classifications of trademarks. There's TM, which stands for trademark. There's SM, which stands for service mark. And there's R, which stands for registered. Now, what is each one used for? To make things easier to understand, I put together a list of examples on popular company trademarks that you will most likely be familiar with. In these examples, you will notice that they quite literally come in many different shapes and sizes. So some examples of brands that have their company logo or brand name trademarked are Apple, McDonald's, Dolce & Gabbana, and Jacuzzi. You'll also see in the next slide that McDonald's has a slogan trademarked as well. So trademarks also come in the form of slogans. Some of the most recognized slogans worldwide are Just Do It by Nike, Life's Good by LG, Open Happiness by Coca-Cola, I'm Lovin' It by McDonald's, It's Finger Lickin' Good by KFC, and Because You're Worth It by L'Oreal. So if you didn't know what I meant when I said you could trademark a shape, here are a couple examples. One way for a company to separate itself from its competition is to actually create a product that stands out from the rest of the market. In this case, that's exactly what Coca-Cola and Toblerone did. Coca-Cola was able to trademark their infamous bottle design in 1977, which stood out from the traditional canned soda. And Toblerone has had their triangular chocolate bar design trademarked since 1909, which stands out from the traditional rectangular shape of chocolate bars. Starbucks has their name and logo merged together in one design, which is called a combination trademark. The reason why it's important to have a trademark for your company or business is because it prevents other companies from using your design or slogan without authorization, regardless of whether or not they knew it was trademarked. Trademarks also help create brand awareness for a company. So you know how Nike and Adidas have their own type of community that people have become loyal to? Well, this is what I mean when I say it creates brand awareness. Right now, Nike donks are extremely popular, and that is likely due to the street style community being the driving force behind this trend. Everyone knows Nike by their swoosh logo. And yeah, that's one reason why trademarking a logo is so important. Brand expert David Hai once said, the single largest source of intangible value in a company is its trademark. So what can a good trademark do for your business? For starters, a strong trademark can become a valuable asset for any business by helping build brand awareness and customer loyalty, as well as protection for your brand's identity. Also, it prevents the competition from imitating your products, which could result in lost customers. Another cool benefit that trademarks provide for a business is that unregistered trademarks are protected by the common law action of passing off, which is when someone uses another person's trademark to sell their own goods or services, leading to consumers being misled about the source of the goods or services. So now I'm actually going to take you guys through doing a search for trademarks to see if this trademark is already taken. This is something I do for every company I start. And after that, I'm going to show you guys Trademark Engine, which is the service I recommend to really forwardly follow your trademark. So the first thing I always like to do is go to the USPTO.gov website. So that's going to be linked down below. And if you go there, what you want to do is come here to trademarks and go to searching trademarks. After that, you guys can see you can search the trademark database for free. And I'll click on this and you'll see a bunch of different search options. So what I like to do is just for a basic wordmark search, I'll click on this. I'll leave all these as is. And for the search term, I'm going to search, you know, a new company I want to start or whatever current company you already have. We're doing this as some due diligence to see whether or not we can actually trademark this term. And of course, I always recommend doing a quick consult with a trademark lawyer. They're going to know a lot better whether or not it's going to be possible for you to trademark a certain term. I will say it's pretty hard to find things that are not yet trademarks unless it's something that's super, super unique. So just be cautious of that. Trademark Engine can also help you guys out with that. And yeah, this is a very, very crucial step. For example, let's actually search up Trademark Engine. I'll click submit query right here. And it's going to show me the different results. So as you guys can see, we have Trademark Engine. This is a live trademark. So if I click on this, I can see all the information. You guys can see this is what they've trademarked this term for. It'll show you the following dates, some other information, as well as who owns this trademark. So of course, in this case, it's Trademark Engine LLC. And yeah, if you were to create a company called Trademark Engine, I would not recommend it because they can come after you. And yeah, that would not be good. After you've done some of your own due diligence, you guys can come to the Trademark Engine website. That link is also going to be down below. And if you guys look at their services, you can see they have a bunch of different things, right? They have trademark registration. They have a comprehensive trademark search. They can actually do that for you. They have monitoring. And yeah, for this video, let's come here to trademark registration. And what you're going to do is come here to start my trademark registration. Packages start at $99. It's very, very affordable. But of course, you will have to pay the USPTO filing fees, which you'd have to pay anyways. If we look at different packages that they have, you can see there's the basic package, there's the standard package, and there's the deluxe package. Basic, of course, comes with the fewest things, whereas deluxe comes with a bit more. And yeah, it's really going to be up to you guys on which one you guys want. But for this video, we'll just go with the standard package. So let's click get started here. And yeah, this is the whole application process. It takes about seven minutes. I'm not going to actually go through this step by step because you guys can easily go through this yourself. But as you guys can see, it's going to ask you some questions. It's going to have you enter in some information. And if you guys do have some questions, you can actually call their phone number or enter a live chat with a support agent. But yeah, just to show you guys really quickly, let's say we want to do a name trademark. Let's say we want to trademark Charlie Chang business example. Okay, let's say we want to do that. It's going to ask if your mark includes a living person's name. In this case, yes. But for most of you guys, you probably will not have a living person in your business name. So you'll probably select no. It's going to ask, does your mark include any words other than English or non-Latin characters? We'll select no. Are you currently using this trademark in your business? You can select yes or no. Click continue. It's not going to ask if your trademark is going to be owned by an individual or an entity such as a corporation or LLC. So you guys can select that. It'll have you enter in all the information right here and you can click continue. After that, you're going to choose your trademark class. So it's going to ask, do you sell or intend to sell a good or a service? So you guys can choose there. I do services, so I'll select that. I will select the category. So let's just choose that. And then you can provide a few more details on the goods or services that you are selling with this trademark. They have samples in case you don't know what to put. So yeah, they really help you guys through this whole application process. So yeah, pretty much you're going to want to go through this entire application process. It'll take about seven minutes. And after that, Trademark Engine is just basically going to handle everything for you. They have their team of lawyers. They've literally created so many trademarks for people. Yeah, it's just super cool that there are platforms like this out there that make it so easy and affordable to create a trademark. So yeah, again, the link to Trademark Engine is going to be down below. And that'll take you to the exact page that you need to get to. All right, so some additional things you should know about trademarks. Typically, the cost to trademark something is between $275 to $400 per class. There are a total of 45 different trademark classes in the U.S. alone. So you'll want to do your own research on this and find the class that is right for your business. I know that $275 to $400 per trademark is pretty pricey. But when you factor in what it costs to register something like a patent, which can be tens of thousands of dollars, the cost to trademark something is actually pretty low. Also, the least expensive way to actually do this is to register online through USPTO's Trademark Electronic Application System. There's three different types of applications on here. There's TEAS Plus that costs $225 per trademark class. And it's the cheapest and most restrictive of the three. There's also TEAS Reduced Fee, or RF, that costs $275 per trademark class. And it allows you to create customized descriptions to follow your trademark under. And TEAS Standard costs $350, which is a lot more expensive than the Plus. But it comes with less requirements when following the trademark. So after your trademark is accepted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, it's going to be good for 10 years, and the trademark can then be renewed for additional 10-year periods moving forward. To renew, all you have to do is file a new application and pay a renewal fee before the 10-year period is up. This will ensure that your trademark registration remains active at all times. And if you don't renew your trademark registration, it will eventually expire and you will lose your right to use the mark. And while you can still use your common law rights to the mark, it may be more difficult to enforce those rights without having that registered trademark. Common law trademark already offers some protection for things like names, logos, pictures, domain names, ideas, and more. So in some cases, a trademark may not be required. You're really only going to want to trademark something when you plan on expanding your business or selling it in the future. The reason why is because as your business expands, so does the competition. So as a way of preventing the competition from stealing your logo and jeopardizing your brand, you are going to want to apply for that federal trademark. Anyways, that's it for this video. As always, the relevant links are going to be down below in the description. And yeah, just know it's actually a lot easier and cheaper to file a trademark than you might think. And if you're starting a business or you already have a business that you want to expand, well, then having a trademark can be extremely, extremely useful. If you guys enjoyed the video, make sure to hit that like button and also subscribe for more content just like this. This whole channel is dedicated at giving you guys free guides and tutorials, helping you to start up your business. Thank you so much for your time and I'll see you in the next video.