what is a trademark?
A trademark protects the name, logo, or slogan your customers associate with your business. Here’s the basic idea: we don’t want consumers to be tricked into thinking they’re buying from one company when they’re actually buying a knock-off. Think about someone buying what they believe is a Prada bag, only to find out it fell apart three months later because it wasn’t really Prada. Trademarks exist to prevent that kind of confusion.
A trademark doesn’t protect the product itself. That’s what patents and copyrights do. It protects the identity behind the product. Without one, someone can open a business with a name nearly identical to yours, sell similar products to your customers, and there’s not much you can do about it.
why it matters
If someone files for your name before you do, you could be forced to rebrand. And rebranding isn’t just a new logo. It’s a new website, new packaging, new marketing materials, and all the recognition you’ve built goes with it. Trademark litigation costs tens of thousands of dollars. Registration is a fraction of that.
Think of it as an insurance policy. You may not need it, but you’ll be glad you have it when the accident happens. It’s a big country. Someone may be out there right now using a name confusingly similar to yours. You want to be the one sending the cease and desist letter, not receiving one.
what can you trademark?
Most people think trademarks are just for business names. They’re not. Names of people and companies, logos, taglines, slogans, and even sounds can all be trademarked.
But not every name qualifies. The mark has to be distinctive. Imagine if someone trademarked “Coffee Shop.” If that were approved, the owner could stop every coffee shop in the country from using those words. That’s why generic and purely descriptive terms get refused.
Surnames can be tricky too. The USPTO will often refuse a surname unless consumers already recognize it as a brand. Ford Motors is a surname, but nobody thinks “last name” when they hear it. They think “cars.” That’s acquired distinctiveness. If you’re just starting out, a surname alone is harder to register. We evaluate your mark before you spend a dime on filing.
how trademark classes work
A trademark doesn’t give you blanket protection across everything. It protects specific goods or services organized into 45 classes at the USPTO.
Let’s use an example. Say you sell pillows and rugs under your brand name. That’s Class 20. Your trademark protects your name for those products. But could someone else use the same name for steel beams? Probably. That’s Class 6. Pillows and steel beams are unrelated products. No customer is going to confuse the two.
The key question is always “likelihood of confusion.” Would a buyer purchase one product thinking it came from a different company? A brand like Coca-Cola, which makes everything from clothing to kitchen items, would hold protection across many classes. A smaller company probably won’t. Each class requires its own filing fee, so we make sure you’re covered where it counts without paying for classes you don’t need.
in use vs. intent to use
To register a trademark, you need to show you’re using the mark “in commerce.” That means you’re actually selling products or services under that name. If you’re not selling, you can’t get a trademark.
But what if you’re not selling yet? You can file an “intent to use” application. Think of it as holding your place in line. Nobody else can register your name for that class while your application is pending. Once you start selling, you convert it by submitting proof and paying an additional fee. Your priority date goes back to the original filing. That can be critical if someone else tries to claim the name in the meantime.
You can’t hold the space forever though. Extension fees are due every six months, and after a couple of years the USPTO will expect you to show use or give it up.
the difference between ™ and ®
You’ve seen both symbols. They mean very different things.
™ can be used anytime you claim a name as your trademark. No registration required. It’s like marking your territory. It doesn’t give you federal protection, but it puts people on notice. If someone in your area uses the same name and your customers are getting confused, having used the ™ helps your case under state law.
® means the mark is federally registered with the USPTO. Completely different level of protection. You get nationwide rights, the ability to sue in federal court, potential treble damages and attorney’s fees, and after five years the mark can become “incontestable.”
how long do trademarks last?
Forever. As long as you’re using the mark in commerce and paying the maintenance fees every five years, your trademark stays active. Miss a filing and you lose it. But unlike patents and copyrights, which both expire, a trademark can protect your brand for as long as you’re in business.
what happens if someone uses your name?
With a registered trademark, you can force them to stop. You can require them to destroy all infringing products and materials. You can recover damages, including all the profit they made from using your name. In willful cases, courts can triple the damages and make them pay your attorney’s fees. The penalties are severe enough to put the infringing company out of business.
Without one? You’re stuck with a state law claim, limited remedies, and the burden of proving the name was yours first. Much harder. Much more expensive. Much less likely to win.
what we do
We handle the entire trademark process from start to finish. It starts with a free evaluation. Tell us about your business and the mark you want to protect, and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s likely to be approved. From there we conduct a comprehensive search, prepare and file your application, monitor it through the USPTO review process, and respond to any office actions on your behalf.
Applications filed by attorneys have a significantly higher approval rate than those filed without one. Typical timeline from filing to registration is 8 to 12 months.
pricing
Trademark registration starts at $1,800 per application. This includes a comprehensive trademark search, application preparation and filing, monitoring through registration, and response to basic USPTO office actions. Proceedings such as oppositions or more complex responses may incur additional fees, which we’ll discuss with you before proceeding. Additional classes are $200 each, plus a $350 USPTO filing fee per class.”
We’re transparent about costs. There are no hidden fees.
what is a patent?
A patent gives you the exclusive right to make, use, and sell your invention for a limited number of years. But here’s the catch. In exchange for that protection, you have to publicly disclose exactly how the invention works. And not just a general overview. The disclosure has to be detailed enough that someone in your field could actually build it from what you’ve written.
Think of a patent as a blueprint. You hand over the instructions, and the government gives you a monopoly on the invention. That’s the deal.
This means you need to know exactly how your invention is made before you file. A patent isn’t a loose idea or a concept you’re still working out. It’s a detailed technical document. The application alone can take three months or more to develop, and the full process from filing to approval can take years. But once approved, your rights go back to the filing date, not the date of approval. So even while your application is pending, you’re building priority.
types of patents
Utility patents cover the way an invention works. The function, the process, the method. If you’ve invented a new tool, a new manufacturing process, or a new piece of software, this is the one you need. Utility patents last 20 years from the filing date.
Design patents cover the way an invention looks. Not the function, just the ornamental appearance. If your product has a unique shape, surface pattern, or visual design that sets it apart, a design patent keeps others from copying it. Think of the Bodum French Press. Any French Press has to be open at the top with a plunger, but the specific shape, materials, and pattern of the metal bands? That’s protectable. Design patents last 15 years from the date the patent is granted.
Provisional applications don’t result in a patent on their own. What they do is secure a filing date for 12 months while you prepare a full utility application. Think of it as holding your place in line. It’s a cost-effective way to establish priority and buy yourself time to develop the full application.
how long does a patent last?
Utility patents last 20 years from the filing date. Design patents last 15 years from the date the patent is granted. Once a patent expires, the invention enters the public domain and anyone can use it freely. That’s the tradeoff. You get a monopoly, but not forever.
One thing a lot of people don’t realize: patents also require maintenance fees to stay active. The USPTO charges fees at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after a utility patent is granted. If you don’t pay them, the patent expires early. We make sure you know what’s coming and when.
what can be patented?
Your invention has to meet three requirements:
- Novelty. It hasn’t been done before. If someone already patented it, published it, or sold it, it’s not novel. Even if you came up with it independently, if it already exists in the public record, you can’t patent it. This also means you can’t take an existing product and simply use it for a new purpose. A shower curtain hung inside a microwave to prevent splatter is still a shower curtain. Putting an existing product in a new context doesn’t make it a new invention.
- Non-obvious. It can’t be something that anyone in your field would naturally come up with. If a skilled engineer or designer would look at the problem and arrive at the same solution without much creative effort, the USPTO will likely reject it.
- Useful. This is the easiest bar to clear. Your invention just has to do something. It has to have a practical application.
You don’t have to build a physical prototype, but you do need to be able to fully describe how it works and how to make it. If someone wrote about how to make the same invention before you did, even if it was buried in a college thesis sitting on a university library shelf, you can’t patent it.
the disclosure problem
Here’s where a lot of people get into trouble. If you’ve talked about your invention publicly, posted it online, sold it, or even offered it for sale, the clock is already ticking. In the United States, you have one year from the first public disclosure to file your patent application. Miss that window and your invention is no longer patentable. Period.
And if you’re thinking about international protection, the rules are even stricter. Most countries outside the U.S. have no grace period at all. You must file before any public disclosure. So the rule of thumb is simple: file first, talk later.
what can’t be patented?
Not everything qualifies, no matter how clever it is. The following generally cannot be patented:
- Recipes and food formulations
- Naturally occurring substances and compounds
- Abstract ideas, mathematical formulas, and theories
- Laws of nature and natural phenomena
- Anything that has already been publicly disclosed without a timely filing
If you’re not sure whether your invention qualifies, that’s exactly what the evaluation is for.
what about software?
Software patents exist, but they’re harder to get. The USPTO is stricter about software because it often falls close to the line of “abstract ideas,” which aren’t patentable. To qualify, a software invention generally has to do more than just automate a known process. It needs to solve a technical problem in a new way or improve how a computer actually functions.
If you have a software idea, it’s worth a conversation. But go in knowing that the bar is higher and the process can be more involved.
international protection
A U.S. patent only protects you in the United States. If you need protection in other countries, we can file international applications through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which gives you a path to protection in over 150 countries. The rules, costs, and timelines vary by country, and as we mentioned, the disclosure requirements are stricter in most places. We handle international filings and can walk you through the options.
how long does it take?
Patents are not quick. A utility patent typically takes 2 to 3 years from filing to approval, sometimes longer depending on the technology and the USPTO backlog. Design patents are faster, usually 12 to 18 months. The application itself takes time to develop as well. Expect at least 3 months of work to prepare a quality utility patent application. Rushing it leads to weak patents that are easy to challenge.
why file now?
Every day you wait is a day someone else could file first. The U.S. patent system is first to file. That means if two people independently invent the same thing, the one who files first gets the patent. It doesn’t matter who had the idea first.
If you’ve already disclosed your invention publicly, you may have less than a year to act. If you haven’t disclosed it yet, the smartest thing you can do is file before you do. A provisional application is an affordable way to lock in your date while you continue developing.
what happens if someone copies your invention?
Patent infringement carries significantly higher consequences than trademark or copyright infringement. If someone makes, uses, or sells your patented invention without permission, you can sue for lost profits, a reasonable royalty, or both. If the court finds the infringement was willful, it can award up to triple the damages.
You can also get a court order forcing them to stop manufacturing and selling the product entirely. In exceptional cases, the court can make them pay your attorney’s fees on top of everything else. Given the high potential awards and favorable legal standards, top attorneys will often take strong patent cases on contingency, meaning you can fight the case at very little upfront cost.
Think of it like an insurance policy. The upfront cost of a patent is real, but the protection it provides has its own monetary value and power. Without it, a larger company can copy your design, undercut your price, and there’s not much you can do about it.
pricing
Patent costs depend on the type and complexity of the invention. The following are our attorney fees and do not include USPTO government filing fees, which vary by patent type and entity size:
- Provisional application: starting at $2,500 plus government fees
- Design patent: starting at $5,000 plus government fees
- Utility patent: starting at $10,000 plus government fees
These are starting points. Final costs depend on the complexity of your invention and the scope of protection you need. We’ll give you a clear estimate after reviewing your submission.
what is a copyright?
Copyright protects original creative work. A painting, a photograph, a logo design, a website layout, a song, a piece of software. As soon as your creative idea is fixed in a tangible medium, it’s protected. You don’t have to file anything. You don’t have to put a © on it. The protection is automatic.
As the copyright holder, you have the exclusive right to copy, distribute, publicly display, and create derivatives of your work. Anyone who violates those rights is an infringer. And here’s the part most people don’t realize: copyright is a no-fault law. It doesn’t matter why or how the violation occurred. If someone uses your work without permission, it’s an infringement. Period.
Say someone grabs your photo from your website and uploads it to a stock image site. A t-shirt company buys it from the stock site, thinking it’s legitimate. Doesn’t matter. The t-shirt company is still an infringer, even though they paid for the image. They can sue the stock site separately, but that’s their problem, not yours.
why registration changes everything
Here’s the catch. Copyright protection is automatic, but enforcement is not. There’s no agency, no police force, no FBI division that goes after copyright infringers. If someone steals your work, it’s on you to do something about it. And doing something about it usually means a lawsuit.
Without registration, here’s what happens. You find your artwork on someone’s t-shirt. Your licensing fee would have been $400. The infringer made maybe $100 in profit attributable to your image, and after they deduct business expenses, the actual damages might be $420. But the lawsuit costs $5,000 or more. The math doesn’t work. So you do nothing, the infringer keeps your work, and you get nothing.
Registration fixes this. If you register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office before the infringement occurs(or within three months of publication), you unlock statutory damages. That means:
- $750 to $30,000 per infringement, without having to prove actual damages
- Up to $150,000 per infringement if it’s willful
- The infringer pays your attorney’s fees if you win
That last one is the game changer. When the infringer is on the hook for your legal fees, most attorneys will take the case on contingency. You don’t pay anything upfront. The attorney takes their fees from the award. And because the infringer knows every hour they fight costs them more money, they’re far more likely to settle early.
Registration is like an insurance policy. For a small fee, you make every infringement lawsuit financially viable. Without it, most cases aren’t worth fighting.
how registration works
Registration is done through the U.S. Copyright Office’s online portal. The process and fees vary depending on what you’re registering.
Photographers get special treatment at the Copyright Office. A painter or illustrator has to register each work individually, or register unpublished works as a collection. But a photographer can register up to 750 published photos in a single filing. If you’re a photographer producing hundreds of images a year, this makes registration practical in a way it isn’t for most other creators.
For visual artists, sculptors, and illustrators, each published work generally requires its own registration. Unpublished works can be grouped together in a single application, but once a work is published, the rules change. The key is to register before you publish or within three months of publication. If you wait and an infringement happens before you register, you lose access to statutory damages.
how long does copyright last?
For works created today, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. For works made for hire, it’s 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter. After that, the work enters the public domain and anyone can use it.
international protection
There’s no single international copyright that protects your work everywhere. But the Berne Convention, which has over 180 member countries including the United States, creates a framework. The basic principle is that member countries must give foreign works the same protection they give their own. So your work created in the U.S. is protected in France, Germany, Japan, and most other countries.
The catch is that statutory damages, attorney’s fees, and the no-fault enforcement structure are U.S. laws. They don’t exist in other countries. If someone infringes your work overseas, you may have rights under that country’s laws, but enforcing them is a different story. It’s expensive, it’s slow, and the remedies are usually weaker.
the copyright notice
You don’t need a copyright notice for protection. But you should use one anyway. The proper format is the © symbol, the year of first publication, and the copyright holder’s name.
Why bother? Two reasons. First, it makes it harder for an infringer to claim their copying was “innocent.” An innocent infringer defense can reduce the damage award enough to make a lawsuit not worth filing. The notice eliminates that defense.
Second, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), removing a copyright notice from a digital image is itself a violation that carries additional damages of up to $25,000. So if someone crops out your notice before using your photo, that’s a separate claim on top of the infringement.
what about AI-generated work?
This is a question we get more and more. The short answer: work created by AI is not copyrightable.
The Copyright Act requires human authorship. A work must be the product of a human creative mind to receive protection. The Copyright Office has been explicit about this. If you type a prompt into an AI image generator and it produces an image, that image has no copyright protection. Anyone can use it. You can’t register it, you can’t sue over it, and you can’t stop someone from copying it.
Where it gets more nuanced is when a human uses AI as a tool alongside substantial creative input. If you’re selecting, arranging, and modifying AI outputs with enough creative judgment, those specific human-authored elements may be protectable. But the AI-generated portions are not. The Copyright Office is evaluating these cases individually, and the line is not clearly drawn yet.
The practical takeaway: if your business relies on content that needs legal protection, it needs to be created by a human. AI-generated content is in the public domain.
what we do
We help creators and businesses protect and enforce their copyrights. Our services include:
DMCA takedown notices. If your work is being used online without permission, we draft and send DMCA takedown notices to the hosting platform, the ISP, or both. This is often the fastest way to get infringing content removed.
Infringement response. If you’ve received a cease and desist letter or a copyright claim, we review the situation and respond on your behalf. If someone is infringing your work, we send the demand letter.
Licensing agreements. If you want to license your work to others, or if someone wants to license theirs to you, we draft the agreements that define the terms, the scope, and the compensation.
Copyright registration guidance. We help you understand when and how to register your work, which registration options make sense for your situation, and how to build registration into your workflow so you’re protected before problems arise.
If you have questions about copyright registration, enforcement, or licensing, use the form below and we’ll get back to you.