We get this question quite a bit. So let’s kind of start at the beginning and talk about what is a trademark,
A trademark is any kind of design word colour? Even the smell that indicates the origin or source of your goods or services. what does that mean?
When we talk about trademarks, we really are talking about lowering cognitive search costs. Basically means that the next time a consumer goes to reach for your good or reach for your service, they’re able to recall that quickly and without a lot of effort. That makes the brand connection and it makes it easier for them to find your product and buy it again. So that’s really the benefit of trademarks. We seek trademark protection.
What type of protection important for an e-commerce store owner?
A trademark is a very valuable asset that when you go to sell your business is one of the first things that other purchasers will look for as a primary business asset. So it’s a very valuable piece of intellectual property protection because it protects the goodwill that you’ve built into your brand over the course of your business. Secondly, now with a lot of e-commerce retailers. Selling on Amazon? Trademark registration will allow you access to brand registry (url : https://brandservices.amazon.in) which will allow you to stop counterfeiting and to allow you to cease third parties from taking advantage of your listings or otherwise harming your brand. On Amazon as a platform it gives you access and 3rd it allows you to stop other kind of nefarious actions. Things like keyword bidding, people using your trademark and ad text people attempting to. Hijack your domain name or syphon traffic from your e-commerce store for the purposes of selling their own product. Another great benefit is that it’s defensive. If you have a registered trademark, you know that no one else is going to come out of the work and send you a cease and desist letter or potentially file suit against you. It gives you that Peace of Mind as a business owner that you can continue with your business without a whole lot of additional unnecessary risk.
What does trademark registration like? What is the process?
If you talk to an trademark attorney, the first step is going to be a clearance search and that’s typically is a search of the Indian Patent and Trademark Office database and a search of third party databases, sometimes international. Or common law databases that identify whether or not there are other trademarks that conflict with your mark. And when we do this, we look for things that are likely to cause consumer confusion. So we’re looking for similar applications or registrations. That are used in association with the same or similar goods or services and once that clearance search is done, we draught an application, we provide it to you for your review, you sign off on it and then we file it and the process takes a while. Once the application is filed, it goes to the Indian Patent and Trademark Office and in examining attorney, which is an attorney on the other side, is assigned to your trademark application. That examining attorney then reviews the application. To determine whether or not it meets procedural requirements and whether or not the substance of the application is correct, and if it isn’t, the examining attorney will issue what’s called an office action. An office action is basically a brief that says you can’t get registration, and it’s for some reason. When that happens, it’s the attorney’s duty to come up with arguments and respond to the refusal to register your trademark by submitting a response to that office action. If you get through, there’s a publication period. The publication period lasts few days, and during that these day period, third parties can oppose your trademark registration, if they believe that it is likely to cause confusion with their existing use. So back in the day when trademark lawyers would use a lot of paper, the big Trademark Gazette would be sent around to attorneys around the country. They would flip through it. They would look for conflicting marks, or excuse me, marks that conflict with their existing clients marks. And then they would send demand letters asking the applicants to cease their uses. Now it’s all done electronically. We can monitor these types of filings electronically and we can identify when somebody is attempting to register a mark that is similar to yours. And ultimately, if your mark is not opposed, you’ll get registration in approximately few weeks from the publication date or from the end of the opposition period and you’ll get a nice little registration certificate in the mail. But that’s not the end of it. After that you have a number of duties, one of which is to renew your trademark. To enforce it and also to, if you would like to file an Affidavit of Incontestability claiming that your mark is the strongest possible mark that it can be between the 5th and 6th years of use. So there’s a lot of follow up work that goes into a trademark registration that is important to keep a handle on and that’s why attorneys often. Manage their dockets, their trademark dockets, with two calendars. That way, if one data is missed, there’s a backup calendar so that you don’t miss those important deadlines. Because trademarks can be one of the most valuable assets in your business.
