Back to: Trademark Process

A brand is a marketing concept that encompasses how people feel about your product or service. Customers associate certain elements with different brands, such as reputation, image, and emotion. For example, a certain brand might have been developed to encourage you to feel confident, calm, or secure.

On the other hand, a federal trademark registration can provide nationwide legal protection for your brand in connection with particular goods or services. It is your choice whether to protect your brand under trademark law. Many business owners choose to protect their brand names for their main or dominant goods or services. You might also choose to protect a slogan or logo for those goods or services, if you have one.

Deciding what you want to protect and to what extent is up to you. You can have a brand, but decide not to protect that brand by registering it as a trademark. If you choose not to register your brand as a trademark, however, anyone could misuse your brand or create a brand so similar to yours that people can’t tell the difference between them. So, even if consumers want to purchase your products or services because they trust your brand’s reputation, that customer might purchase someone else’s by mistake because they can’t tell the difference between the trademarks.