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Do I Have to Be an American Resident to File in the U.S.?A lot of people wonder whether they need to live in America in order to file a trademark with the U.S. Trademark Office. The answer is that no, you don’t need to live in...

Number 1“Our brand name comes from rearranging and changing a few letters of our competitor’s name.” While clever, the best-case scenario will be a trademark so close to another that your brand value will be very low. In the worst case, you will be in the middle of...

I'm going to teach you how to do the trademark dance. And this is the answer to the question we get all the time, What do most companies trademark? There are four things that are most commonly trademarked. And as I said, we are going to learn them through the...

Trademark Cancellation Trademark Cancellation Proceedings in the US and Canada allow you to request the trademark office inquire whether that trademark owner is still using the trademark. If they cannot prove continued use, the trademark office will remove that mark from the register in a process known as “clearing the...

Andrei’s Answer on Cost for Trademark SearchSo the answer to that is very simple. In most countries, they have an online system within trademark services that allows you to check that. It's a public record, so both Canadian, US, and European Union databases are open to the public. Since...

The Marketing PerspectiveStarting with the marketing perspective, again the brand needs to set you apart. That's really the reason why the trademark offices and trademark laws around the world don't allow you to trademark descriptive terms because the point of a trademark is to not let you own the category....

THINKING OF TRADEMARKING YOUR BRAND? Right now, the term "trademark" covers both product names and service names, products, and services. It works very similarly to how product names have always functioned, which we also have a short clip about. For a while, there was a differentiation between trademarks that would...

Money from Thin Air?If you think George Clooney's name is the reason for such a fantastic sale price, think again. Diageo could hire Mr. Clooney to advertise all their drinks, existing lines, and brands for much less than $1 billion. Instead, they paid him $1 billion to acquire the...

How Long Does a Registration Last?After surviving the lengthy process of application, approval, allowance, and ultimately registration, the initial term in most countries is ten years from that registration date. However, the European Union and Australia are among those that count the ten years from the filing date. There...