Why use the Trademark Factory^® to register your trademarks in Canada and the United States?

If you file for a trademark yourself, then you will only pay the government fees, but, as statistics show, chances are you will receive an office action from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) or United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) telling you that your trademark application does not meet their standards. Many unrepresented applicants do not know how to respond to these office actions, and abandon their trademark applications.

We have seen cases where self-represented applicants drafted their applications so poorly that there was nothing we could do to fix them when they were refused by the trademark examiner. In Canada, after a trademark application has been filed, one cannot broaden the scope of goods and services that the application is supposed to cover. Therefore, if your statement of wares and services is deemed too descriptive because of the way you described your products and services, there may be very little you can do at this point. In order for the trademark to not be descriptive you would need to use a broader language for your goods and services, but you can't do this after you have already filed your application. Catch 22!

The net result is that unrepresented applicants will often have spent a lot of time, not have a trademark and lose the fees they paid to the government.

If you hire a typical law firm to help you register your trademarks, you will receive a 2-page schedule of fees, where the lawyer will explain to you how complex trademark registration process is and that if this happens then they will be charging you this amount, and if that happens then they will be charging you that amount.

We are not saying that other law firms will fail at registering your trademarks. Indeed, most trademark lawyers from established law firms will do their best to get your trademarks registered. There are a few problems with this option, however.

First of all, you will never know your budget beforehand. Most law firms use flat rate fees for some elements of the trademark registration process, but charge you an hourly fee in the middle when the real work of a trademark lawyer happens. Often, law firms would only state their fee for filing a trademark application, typically around $700 to $1,000. What you may not realize is that you would be receiving more and more invoices every time the lawyer would sneeze at your file. And if an examiner at the trademark office finds something problematic about the application, it usually means several hours of billable time, which most clients grudgingly pay, because they are already invested in the process. This means that your cost to register a trademark through a typical law firm can be anywhere between $1,300 and $6,000.

The second problem is that if CIPO or USPTO refuse to register your trademark, you will have spent a lot of time, not have a trademark and lose both the fees you paid to the government and the fees you paid to the law firm.