The Real Price You Pay For Trademarking

With trademarks, you are gonna pay the price no matter what. You can pay a little bit of money to protect your brand at the early stage of your business, or you’ll pay a much higher price if you don’t. Here’s what I mean. 

When you’re just starting out, nobody knows you. Nobody knows how big you’re gonna get. Nobody knows your brand. You don't really have anybody who's looking at you who has you on their radar. So when you come up with the name, the first thing you do is check whether that name is available. 

And if it is, you trademark it right away. And if it isn't available, then again you don't really have an attachment to that name because you haven't built anything. 

So you go back to the drawing board, come up with a new name, and check if that's available. And you keep doing that until you come up with a name that you love and that's available and then you trademark that name early on. 

So the risk of that is you may be investing in trademarking a brand for a business that doesn't go anywhere. Is there such a risk? Yes! But this is a much lower risk compared to all the other risks in this game, so hear me out!

Advantages of Early Trademark Filing

In the best-case scenario, you are going to end up having your brand protected so that you can build your business on a safe foundation. 

And when you succeed, when you get your business to where you wanted to go so finally when people start noticing you when they realize that you exist, your brand will be well protected and it will be worth something. 

This is often one of the most important, and most overlooked, steps in starting a business. But securing your trademark early is really the best thing to do for your business. If you believe in yourself and your business, you have no reason not to do it anyway.

Also, having a trademark for your business can give lots of people confidence in what they are doing. If you know that your name or logo is secure and unique, you have one less thing to worry about when starting your operations.

Risks of Not Filing a Trademark

Now, compare that to other options. When you start a business, you put your heart and soul, using all those countless sleepless nights, working on and working on and working on. 

Try to get people to notice you, go to all those trade shows, you put on Facebook Lives, you put your money in Google ads, you put your money in your business cards, put your money on the website, do all that stuff. 

You hire a team, you rent an office, whatever it is that you do. But you may be a virtual office, it doesn't matter, but you still put your heart, soul, and money into building something. 

And let's say a few years after, when you finally make it, you celebrate, and then the next day you wake up to receive a letter in your mailbox, a letter from a lawyer that's going to say “you can't own this brand, you have to rebrand, you have to start everything from scratch and, you have to pay them from infringing their trademark” how’d that feel? How is that not a price you’re going to pay?

So in the worst-case scenario, you're going to end up with no brand and maybe no business. Choose your regrets. You can have a regret of yes you know, “I invested some money in protecting the brand that didn’t go anywhere,” or your other regret could be, “I could have owned this. I could have done this properly, and this would have never happened to me.”

What Happens When You Wait to File a Trademark

We just had a client who went through something like that. The fact is they came to us a year ago first and they had a conversation with us and we walked them through all of our packages. We told them that we would do the search to make sure that their name is available, and if it was available we’ll just follow our trademark and if it wasn't available, they’ll get all their money back, essentially that they get a free consultation why their brand is not trademarkable. 

So they have this conversation with us. They told us they are going to think about it because they were insured, they were ready and they kept thinking about it and you know, really when we get a brand owner on the phone and at the end of the conversation, they tell us they need to think about it. We know that their answer is no. They're just being so polite to tell us about it. 

Though you need to think about it, ok you think about it. And so they were thinking about it and then they booked another call with our strategy advisors just the other day. And they went through the process, they purchased our services for the name and the logo in both Canada and the US. 

It was a pretty decent investment on their end and they did it because they were about to open the restaurant. So it was the client who was in the restaurant business. And so all this time went into preparation for why they wanted to make sure that they got all the right recipes. They wanted to make sure they got all the right signages. 

They wanted to make sure they got everything done perfectly. And so they were about to open their doors a week from now. They went through with four trademarks that we would file for them, and we did the search and realized that they couldn't do anything under that name. 

They couldn’t do anything under that logo. And so we had a conversation with them a few days later and said that “we’re sorry this name that you came up with, this name that you spent 12 months working on, you can't trademark, you can’t even use it. 

Because the moment somebody notices your restaurant if they’re the trademark owner in either Canada or the US, they’ll shoot you down. You have to go back to the drawing board and start everything from scratch.” 

The brand owner was shocked! Absolutely shocked! Because they were getting ready to open their doors and now they're hearing they really can't open their doors under that name. So they asked for a refund. We gave them a full refund, that's really what the Trademark Factory process is all about.

And I can only imagine what the owner is thinking right now. Because yes, they didn't pay the price for trademarking, but the price they paid is a lot higher now because they'll have to change the signage, they’ll have to change all their materials, their menus, their website, all of that needs to be changed.

And if they don't, they’re going to pay even a higher price. Because they'll put all this money building this up, and then the real brand owner will knock on their door and get all the money they'll have made under that brand and all of the time, all of the efforts, all of the energy, all of the money that they will have invested in this brand, in this business, will be gone. 

It's a lot cheaper to just pay some money at the early stage of your business and have your brand protected. Either way, you are going to pay the price no matter what. So choose your regrets. If you believe in your business, and believe it can succeed, you should protect it from the very beginning.