Why (or why not) someone should trademark a business name? 

To help you decide whether or not to trademark your business name, we asked successful business owners and entrepreneurs this question for their best insights. From preventing confusion in the marketplace to being time-consuming with high costs and complications, there are several opinions that may help inform your decision about trademarking your business name.

Here are 10 considerations for trademarking a business name:

• Prevent Confusion in The Marketplace
• Sell With Amazon on Their Brand Registry
• Be Protected by The ACPA
• Secure Your Business for Growth
• Assure Consumers of Your Authenticity
• Less Priority if You Are Still Figuring Out Your Brand
• You May Have To Choose Patent Over Trademark
• Trademarks Are Assets
• Protect and Showcase Professional Branding
• Can be Time-consuming With High Costs and Complications

Prevent Confusion in The Marketplace

Trademarking your business name is important for a variety of reasons, but preventing confusion in the marketplace is one big one. You could find that a completely different kind of business has the same name, diluting the association of your business name with your kinds of products. Don’t let that happen. Trademark your business name to prevent confusion in the marketplace, ASAP.

Nick Santora, Curricula

Sell With Amazon on Their Brand Registry

We have our brand and logo trademarked. The main reason I did this is to sell on Amazon with a brand registry. This protects from other sellers selling on your product listing. You need to have your product trademarked for Amazon to allow you to become a member of the brand registry. After your company has passed Amazon’s brand registry you have the extra benefit of adding Amazon A+ content to your listing. You can add extra images and make your listing more of a web page than Amazon’s standard listing.  

Evan McCarthy, SportingSmiles

Be Protected by The ACPA

Under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), you won’t have to worry about “cybersquatters”, or internet trolls, stealing your domain name. This act was created for trademarked names, protecting legally-recognized businesses from digital extortion from ill-intentioned individuals. What these individuals do is create websites using other peoples’ business names, refusing to give them up unless paid a high price. However, under this act you have the rights to your business name, earning you the rights to the website domain without having to buy it out from an extortionist.

David Aylor, David Aylor Law Offices

Secure Your Business for Growth

How do you envision your business 5, 10, or 20 years in the future?  If you are serious about your business and your goal is to grow it into something special rather than to treat it as a hobby or a sidegig, you should trademark your business name as soon as possible. The last thing you want is to put your time, money, energy, and your heart and soul into your new business only to discover that another company or competitor, who may be unaware of your existence, just applied for and got a trademark with your company name.  The only possibility you will get your name back would require you to prove in federal court that you existed prior to your competitor, and it would be very expensive with only a small chance of winning.

Alan Himmel, Florida Allstar Public Adjusting, Inc.

Assure Consumers of Your Authenticity

The one reason you should trademark your business name is to legally secure you the sole right to maximize the value of your own business name. A registered business name is merely protected from being used by another business within the state it’s registered in, but not in another state.

A trademarked business name, however, turns it into a property that grants you inherent property rights of the trademark. This will make it unlawful for another business to use your trademark in whatever way and wherever in the country. Albeit applying for a trademark is much more complicated than registering a name, businesses must think of it as an investment in helping their customers be free of doubts about the authenticity of any goods or service with your business name.

Collen Clark, Schmidt & Clark, LLP

Less Priority if You Are Still Figuring Out Your Brand

The only case in which I would not recommend trademarking your business is if you are not yet ready to make it official. If you don’t have the plan or the money to take it to the next step, it is better to wait until you have it all figured out. Going through the process to trademark your business can be expensive, and requires a lot of paperwork for which you probably don’t qualify yet. It is not a priority if you are still figuring out your start-up.

Once you have trademarked your business you are tied to the name and a certain market. So again, even if trademarking your business is essential once you want to grow and become an official brand, I recommend people wait until everything is decided.

John Cheng, Baotris

You May Have To Choose Patent Over Trademark

If your business is based around a unique service, proprietary product, or new technology, then skip the trademark and prioritize a patent. Securing the unique functions of your products against copycats is essential to companies that thrive on the cutting edge. Trademarks are best used to protect software programming, art, music, and slogans that you don’t want to lose to a competitor. The trouble with trademarks is finding a name that is unique and uncommon — too similar to another Trademark and you’ll get a cease and desist, too common and your trademark will be rejected.

Soumya Mohan, Poised

Trademarks Are Assets

Trademarks appreciate. Over time as your brand grows, the value of your trademark grows as well. Since trademarks are an asset, they can be bought, sold and even used to secure a loan. Bigger corporations down the road may even wish to acquire your business if you desire to sell it to them. In short, trademarks can be valuable.

Erin Banta, Pepper

Protect and Showcase Your Professional Branding

Trademarks are a great way to protect and showcase your professional branding. Some businesses may opt to incorporate their brand name or logo in their advertising and editorial photos for various publications, billboards and other ad campaigns on or offline. Using a protected brand and logo are best for professional branding with traditional and nontraditional marketing methods. The more recognizable your brand name and logo, the more likely you are to benefit from the protections that trademarking provides.

Robert Lowdon, Robert Lowdon Photography

Can be Time-consuming With High Costs and Complications

There are many reasons why someone might want to trademark a business name. A trademark can protect a business name from being used by another business, it can help customers identify the products or services of a particular business, and it can give a business an exclusive right to use the name. If you’re thinking of trademarking a business name, it’s important to consult with a trademark attorney to make sure that the name is eligible for protection. 

One reason why someone shouldn’t trademark a business name is that it can be time-consuming. The process of trademarking a business name can be long and complicated, so it’s important to make sure that you are fully prepared before beginning the process. Additionally, trademarks can be expensive to register and maintain, so it’s important to be sure that you are committed to using the trademark before beginning the process. 

Syed Ali Abbas, Seo Perks

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Why should companies develop and introduce new products?

To help inspire new product development, we asked business leaders and CEOs this question for their best insights. From managing seasonal fluctuations to discovering unrestricted talent, there are several reasons why your company should develop and introduce new products as part of its growth strategy.

Here are 10 reasons why companies should develop and introduce new products:

• Manage Seasonal Fluctuations
• Improve Your Competitive Advantage
• Provide More Customer Value
• Diversify Business Risk
• Increase Sales
• Keep Your Company’s Soul Alive
• If You Don’t, Your Competition Will
• Innovate to Provide More Solutions for Your Customers
• Explore New Markets
• Discover a New Unrestricted Talent

Manage Seasonal Fluctuations

A new product launch can help you manage seasonal fluctuations and maintain your market share. Every year, customers want to see something new, but their attention span is shorter than you’d like. If market conditions dictate a new product launch every year around the same time, you need to take action to keep up with it. That’s the best way to boost your sales volumes and keep pace with or exceed the competition.

Randall Smalley, Cruise America

Improve Your Competitive Advantage

Not improving and innovating? Then you’re not moving forward. The only way you’re going to improve your competitive edge is by changing up your product line. Even if you only make improvements to a current product, you can sell it as new and grab more market share in the process. If all you sell is what you currently have, you risk falling behind, and that’s no risk you want to take.

Stephanie Schull, Kegelbell

Provide More Customer Value

Even if your designs are the most beautiful you’ve ever imagined, you should never take your customers for granted. Creativity has several stages of development, and they’re always in flux. Your development activity needs to keep pace with trends if you’re to provide more customer value than your competitors. As long as you keep coming up with new designs and products, your market share will be safe.

Nataly Vanunu, Boho Magic

Diversify Business Risk

When you only sell one product, you’re increasing the risk to your company’s bottom line. The more products and services you develop and offer, the more you diversify your business risk. If you only have one product and it fails, you’re out of luck. But if you have many products and only one of them fails, you can still dominate the domestic market.

Vanessa Molica, The Lash & Sugar Company

Increase Sales

New products help businesses gain new customers. As your new products address the needs of customers that your older products did not, more customers flock in. Often, a fraction of the newer customers check out your older products and buy them based on their needs. This way, the businesses not only see a sale of the new product but also an increased sale of the older ones.

Nathan Hughes, Diggity Marketing

Keep Your Company’s Soul Alive

You want to keep creating products to keep the soul of your business alive. If you start to care more about profit margins and less about launching new ideas and items, you will lose your sense of adventure. Even worse, you’ll lose yourself in the inertia of running a business. There is nothing more uninspiring than that. Conjuring creative ideas is what keeps the enthusiasm level high for your workforce. You don’t want to see that taper. Keep your focus on product discovery. It will keep things interesting.

Joel Jackson, Lifeforce

If You Don’t, Your Competition Will

I can’t even count the number of times a company leader has come to me and said “we were planning on releasing something just like that, but somehow our competition beat us to the punch!” Oftentimes it seems like they assume there’s been some sort of espionage or trickery, but rarely is that the case. The scope of your industry is fairly small when you think about it, and ideas spread quickly within that tight community. We’re all competing for top talent and trying to generate new ideas. When your process for product development slows, you’ll eventually be overtaken.

David Patterson-Cole, Moonchaser

Innovate to Provide More Solutions for Your Customers

Always aim to innovate and provide more solutions that speak to your company’s mission. For example, TurboTax offers different solutions based on the taxpayer’s needs.

The company took note of the unique tax challenges faced by its users and packaged the solutions into various services. Listen to your customers to find additional mission-related problems and develop solutions for an innovation-forward brand.

Amrita Saigal, Kudos

Explore New Markets

Developing a new product gives companies the added advantage of exploring new markets other than their existing ones. Whether it is a market where the product is bound to take the competition by surprise and leave it behind or one that has customers clamoring for the product, an unexplored market promises several new opportunities for success. Also, the added resources a company garners via its product sales in new markets can be put to work to initiate a spurt of growth for the brand, from expansion of its product line to further exploration of fresh territories.

Mary Jurgensen, Gary and Mary West PACE

Discover a New Unrestricted Talent

Discover a new unrestricted talent. Use the symptoms of burnout as a signal to check in with your employees by asking if they have in mind a new initiative to launch? Burnout is the reason why companies should develop new products to keep employees, grow talent, and keep the financial aspects stronger.

Spend 15 minutes each day of focused but casual conversations by asking members what they want to do with their day, the upcoming week, month, and year. This allows you to rethink new talent in the company’s members and introduce new product.

Liudmila Schafer, The Doctor Connect, LLC

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