Monday, September 29, 2008

Creating A Trademark For A Home Business Opportunity Online

By Myles Krueger

It is always important to protect yourself and your assets as a business owner of a home business opportunity online. One of the first ways to do this is by getting a trademark approved by the US government in order to protect your company name. This will be important down the road as you get bigger.

In order for you to trademark something you will have to do so with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. They provide a form online called the Trademark Electronic Application System or the TEAS that you can fill out mostly online in order to get a trademark.

You will probably have to pay around $325 to get the trademark, but that depends on what you want to get done. If this is your first time going through this process make sure that you have thorough help with this. The USPTO actually gives an all day phone number that you can call whenever you want to assist people with questions that they have about filing for a trademark.

They can only do so much for you because they are not trained to help with business philosophy or branding so I suggest that you find yourself a good lawyer that will actually help you through this whole process to find a branded name that you can trademark that will benefit you and your company. They are great to bounce ideas off of so you can get a general direction on how to approach this process.

The last thing you want to have to go through is re-applying after you have filled out the form once. It is possible to get declined the getting a response can take months so you don't want to have to go through all that time while your company name is unprotected. Often you can run into this problem because your name is too general or it infringes upon another companies trademark somehow.

If you are an American citizen you can turn in an application, but the same can be said for a non citizen also. You will probably have to get an EIN number in order to turn one in, but there are no worries. If you are out of the country you can always have a domestic representative like a lawyer help you by filling out the form for you.

I would suggest that when you choose your name that you keep it very general because you never know how your company may change down the road and move into a new direction with products, services and philosophy. You don't want to box yourself in with a name that doesn't apply to your business anymore.

When you have finished this process take joy in it because you have now staked your claim to intellectual property. This could be the beginning of a wonderful future for your brand not having to worry about legal liabilities.

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