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Trademark registration is required if someone or a company wants to be protected by the exclusive bundle of rights granted to a registered trademark owner. Trademarks are considered to be owned once they are publicly used in commerce. It is against the law to intentionally copy a trademark belonging to someone else even if it is not registered. If someone unknowingly has a..

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)searchTrademark Searches:All trademarks which have been registered since 1870 can be searched through several different mediums Trademark Design Searches:Performing a design search is more complicated than a text search for obvious reasons. To make the process easier, the USPTO has created a system of numeric values to a..

A trademark is an important intangible asset to a company, individual or entity which takes the form of a distinctive sign on goods and services. The sign is identified by consumers to distinguish a product from the similar goods or services offered by other entities. It may come in the form of a logo, image, sound, or words. A trademark is indicated by a trademark symbol ..

International trademark law is sometimes implemented on a regional basis. In the Americas, the United States took the lead in setting up trademark protection agreements with Latin American nations. The most widespread agreement was enacted with the passage of the General Inter-American Convention for Trademark and Commercial Protection of Washington, 1929, which is alternately ..

The Madrid Protocol is the most recent of drafted treaties created under the Madrid System. The new treaty was implemented in 1996, and serves to provide for less restrictive requirements and laws that the Madrid Agreement originally contained since 1891. The Protocol is becoming more popular for use regarding the international registration of trademarks, already having mo..

Trademarks are type of intellectual property protection that is granted to unique names, logos, designs, symbols, or device that is intended to be used for commercial purposes and to distinguish products or goods from those from another manufacturer. In other words, trademarks can simply be described as brand names. An example could be Coca-Cola and its world-famous Coca-C..

When Can a Business Use Trademark Names?In order for a business to trademark a name, the actual name should fulfill certain requirements. Brand names such as Nabisco, Kraft, and Dell are names that consumers see every day in stores and on marketing advertisement campaigns. Since they are easily recognizable, the companies which own them trademark them to protect their busi..

The Lanham Act provides for individuals or companies to dispute the conclusions of the Unites States Patent and Trademark Office by making a formal trademark appeal. A trademark appeal can be taken directly to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board regarding any final decision made by the examiner responsible for a particular trademark registration, as long as the payment of the ..

Who is Protected?The Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 protected all famous trademarks from being diluted even if there was not a likelihood of confusion. Likelihood of confusion is vital to any infringement case but it was determined that it was not necessary for dilution to occur. Since arguments over what trademark are famous and were protected by dilution laws were bound ..

The Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) are the two primary means for providing legal solutions to trademark issues that may arise over the registration of domain names Similar evidence is examined under an ACPA proceeding, but with potentially more severe consequences. Actual damages may be determ..

What Makes a Trademark Domain Name Important?A domain name is similar to a street address. It is a string of letters, directing users to a specific website on the Internet. They are required to be exact. Websites which are most likely to attract a larger number of customers became more valuable assets to companies.In the early days of the Internet, domain name holders seized do..

When a company creates a unique logo, symbol, phrase, or any unique visual element to present their product or service to the public in packaging or advertisement mediums, that element is automatically protected under United States intellectual property law. They may bear a TM symbol or a SM symbol next to the trademark element to indicate this protection. If a company wou..

Conducting a trademark search should be handled carefully as to avoid legal complications in the future. The point of a trademark search is to ensure that the trademark is not already in use by another entity. If a company infringes on a person's registered trademark, he or she has the right to sue for damages. To avoid costly legal battles, a trademark search should be extensi..

In seeking the international registration of a trademark, one thing that should be considered is to which treaty the country of the applicant is actually a signatory of. It is an important consideration because not all countries are members to the Madrid Agreement, and more specifically, certain countries may only participate in either the Madrid Agreement or the Madrid Pr..

Due to the observance of territoriality as a legal principle, international protection for trademark rights is not enabled through a single legal statute. It is enacted, rather, through a series of agreements requiring individual nations to adopt compatibly similar definitions of trademarks for their jurisdictions, a process known as harmonization. The earliest source for ..