trademark basics

you use your band name and logo to build your audience and brand yourself. after all that hard work, it could be devastating to find out another band has the same or confusingly similar name.

trademarks can be words, nicknames, letters or abbreviations, number and letter combinations, words in stylized form (like, a logo), pictures, designs, and symbols.

trademarks and service marks are used to distinguish goods and services, so that people (consumers, the public) won’t be confused.  so the standard is not whether someone has the same name as you, it’s whether something is confusingly similar.

for example, if your band name was “blackberry,” people probably wouldn’t confuse your band with the cellular device. but if your name was, “dire straits” and another band’s name is, “dyre strayts,” people might get confused. they sound similar, and both names are being used for bands.

here are two things you can do to protect your name and logo:

1. before you choose a name, do a trademark search. start out with an simple google search to find obvious similarities. see if any of these names are used in a way that’s similar to the way you plan to use the name. next, you can check the USPTO website. but, remember that the USPTO site only shows extra spellings, and not things that sound differently (“dire” vs “dyre”). some people hire professional search companies to look through federal records, state records, and common law searches. they can be expensive, but may be worth it.

2. you can register your name with the USPTO. while it’s not required to get trademark protection, registering your name gives you several advantages. one big advantage is that it gives notice to everyone of your use of the mark, so people can’t claim “good faith” use in it. another advantage is that if someone is using your name in a confusingly similar way, you can get a court order demanding they stop.

a couple of things to keep in mind when filing out the application:

you will have to tell them the date you first used the mark in commerce in connection with your goods/services. you have to verify to the best of your knowledge, that no one else has the right to use the mark (the identical mark or a reseblance of it), where their use would be likely to cause confusion or mistake.

you will also have to submit “specimens of use,” which are examples of how you used the mark as you claim. specimens can include CD labels, advertisements, posters, packing materials showing the mark, or even screen shots of your website where you sell merchandise.

~ by cafenotes on January 2, 2009.