THINKING OF TRADEMARKING YOUR BRAND?

If you have a brand that a name or a phrase written in a fancy font, how should you go about trademarking that? It can feel like a sacrifice to change the look of your brand for your trademark. 

You may be wondering, should you file it as a wordmark? Should you file it as a design mark? Maybe you should do both?

The benefit of filing your trademark application as a wordmark is that it allows you to protect that word or that phrase regardless of how it's designed. It can be any color, any font, and any placement. You can have certain words at the top, certain words at the bottom, or have them all horizontal—it does not matter. The wordmark protects the literal element, the words themselves.

The design mark protects the design, the font. It does indirectly protect the words that are used in that brand. However, the more original the design of the letters and the words, the more important is to protect the design as well. And here is why.

Think of Coca-Cola's script. If somebody came up with a completely different name but wrote it in Coca-Cola's script, it would still be confusingly similar, people would still think that the product comes from them, especially if it's in the same industry. That’s how powerful the font is! The more original the script, the more important it is to protect the design.

If both the name and the design are really original, Coca-Cola is truly a great example of it—you would want to file this as two separate trademarks. One would be the wordmark, and one would be the full design mark.

So the bottom line? It makes total sense that you want to avoid confusing your potential market. You want your brand to stand out more than theirs. Look closely at the thing that you want to establish ownership of, and ensure your intention is to stop your competition from using it in its entirety. 

If it's just a word and you have a relatively standard font, don't necessarily bother with protecting the logo. If you have super interesting writing, and the words themselves are not as original, you may get away with just a logo.

But usually, if your script is more than just a standard font that you can find on your computer, and your name is relatively distinctive, you want to file it as two separate trademarks. One will be just the words, while the other will be just the design!