Trademarking Your Brand Step-by-Step

Let me quickly outline the process first. 

First, the process starts with you filing your trademark application. In most countries, it's done online. Once filed, your application gets a timestamp and is assigned a number. 

With that, your application will just sit there for months before the Trademarks Office assigns one of their specialists to review your application. These specialists are typically called examiners or examining attorneys.

Now, it may be disheartening to hear that your trademark, which you’ve poured hours of blood, sweat, and tears into, that you’re so passionate about, is going to sit, unattended, for so long. 

But I hope that letting you know what to expect gives you some peace of mind throughout the process. In some countries, this period takes a couple of months. Similarly, in the U.S. it's usually 3 to 4 months. 

Unfortunately, the situation is really bad in Canada, where this period now takes close to two years. If you're lucky, the examiner will approve your application right away. 

However, just so you know, this happens for less than a third of applications. And what’s more, if you filed your application yourself, it happens for less than 20% of applications.

Trademark Registration Cost: Time, Money, and Effort

So what happens in most situations? 

For the most part, the real trademark registration cost comes in the money applied, the time left waiting, and any effort made by opposition. 

Let me describe a general situation for example:

First, the examiner will identify problems with your trademark application and issue an office action. We have a separate video where I talk about the most common reasons your trademark application may be rejected. Make sure you watch it if you’re trademarking your brand. 

So if you get an office action, you will typically be given 6 months to respond and recently, the USPTO has shortened this to 3 months.

Then, a few weeks or a few months later, the examiner will review your response and either approve your application or issue a new office action. Again, you will have 3 months to respond. You can also file an extension for a fee.

Sometimes, this back-and-forth can go on for years. And often does when there are multiple office actions issued. Assuming you finally convince the examiner to approve your trademark application, it will then be published for opposition purposes, which will give the public an opportunity to ask the Trademarks Office NOT to register your trademark.

Yes, you read that right. They are putting your trademark up for scrutiny from the general public, asking them to explain why your trademark should NOT be registered.

In other words, first, you need to convince the Trademarks Office that your application is registrable and then you need to survive possible attacks from the world that may feel that by registering your trademark, the Trademarks Office will be violating their rights and legal interests. 

The opposition period ranges from one to several months from country to country.  It is 30 days in the U.S., 2 months in Canada, 3 months in the EU, and so on.

Now, this may seem unfair, or cruel, to subject your trademark to such scrutiny. But remember, every single trademark goes through this process. 

Some Trademark Services Insight on Opposition

The good news here is that oppositions happen very rarely. In fact, less than 1% of the cases see opposition. 

But when they do happen, they, unfortunately, tend to take a long time and cost a lot of money. We call them "an atomic bomb that almost never goes off." It can be one of the few real challenges in trademark services, but luckily, it’s not insurmountable.

If your trademark is opposed and both parties are willing to go all the way, you can easily add a year or two to how long the whole process is going to take. But, assuming your trademark application survives the opposition period, it will then be allowed. 

At that point, there may be some post-allowance formalities you would need to satisfy before your trademark registers. However, you can take solace in the fact knowing you’ve overcome a huge hurdle. 

Trademarking Your Brand in America

In the U.S., if you filed your trademark based on intent-to-use (meaning that at the time you filed your trademark, you weren't actively selling products or services under your brand yet) you must demonstrate to the Trademarks Office that you have commenced using your trademark in commerce. This means that you are now offering to the market all products and services listed in your trademark application. 

Until you show evidence of such use, your trademark will not register. 

You are initially given 6 months to show such use after your trademark is allowed, but you can request up to 5 such extensions of time, each time for another 6 months. Of course, this could extend the date between your trademark being allowed and the date it is registered by up to 3 years.

Trademarking Your Brand Worldwide

Several countries require the payment of additional post-allowance registration fees. On the other hand, in many countries, once your trademark is allowed, it will automatically proceed to registration. 

So that's the registration process in a nutshell. 

As you can see, the most straightforward process where your application is approved right away is never opposed and does not require any post-allowance formalities that will take close to a year. We can comfortably call that the minimum amount of time you can expect for this process to take.

Once you start adding complications such as office actions, post-allowance statements of use, or, god forbid, oppositions, your trademark can take a very long time to register. 

That's why we always tell brand owners to file their trademarks as early as possible because you never know when you're going to need your registration. 

From our experience, if you urgently need to get your brand trademarked, it’s usually already too late. Once again, while you never know exactly how long the whole process is going to take, one thing is for sure it will take a long time.

Remember, we aren’t telling you this to deter you from trying to get something trademarked. We are just giving you a realistic timeline for the trademarking process.

A Real Example in Trademark Services

So if you see an ad that promises you trademark registration in 15 minutes, know they’re lying to you. Chances are, they won't even FILE your trademark in 15 minutes, let alone get it registered. 

So what’s the most time it can take when trademarking your brand? Currently, our anti-record for the longest time it took us to register a trademark for one of our clients is 4 years, 10 months, and 26 days between his filing and registration dates. Almost 5 years!

This customer bought our All-Inclusive package for us to file his trademark in Canada. We went through hell and back with all the office actions, refilings, more office actions, cancellation petitions, and more office actions due to changes in Canadian law that happened in between, but we finally got our client what he paid us for. 

And the best part? The client never had to pay us a penny more than he paid at the very beginning of the process. 

I'm afraid to even think how much money we lost on this file but we're super happy that we managed to deliver on our promise. It’s one of the things that makes me happiest working in trademark services. Other trademark companies may have made him pay far more, adding a much higher trademark registration cost than we deliver.

So now that you know what the trademarking process entails and how long it takes, you can have proper expectations for what it really takes to get your trademark registered. 

If you are serious about protecting your brand with a guaranteed result for a guaranteed budget, book a call with one of our strategy advisors, who will be happy to answer all your questions. And if you're just here to learn more about trademarks, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter for more trademark-related content.