Trademark Registration

Common-law rights start the moment you use a mark in commerce, but they are geographically narrow and weak in court. A federal USPTO registration gives you nationwide constructive notice (everyone is presumed to know your mark exists), a presumption of validity, the right to use the ® symbol, the ability to sue infringers in federal court, statutory damages and attorney's fees as remedies, the foundation for blocking others from registering similar marks, the basis for filing internationally through the Madrid Protocol, and the credentials platforms need to enforce takedowns under Amazon Brand Registry, Meta, TikTok, and others. Common-law rights remain. Federal registration adds the leverage that makes those rights useful.

For a clean application with no Office Actions and no opposition, the typical timeline is 12 to 18 months from filing to registration. The first examiner review usually arrives 7 to 10 months in. After that comes publication for opposition, a 30-day public window, and the issuance of the certificate (or, for intent-to-use applications, a notice of allowance and a separate Statement of Use filing). If your application receives an Office Action, especially a substantive one, the timeline can extend by 6 months or more. The "few months" some sites still quote reflects USPTO pendency from years ago. Plan for the current reality. A year-plus is normal, unless something is wrong with the application.

The flat fee covers a clearance search, the attorney opinion letter, the USPTO application drafted and filed by your attorney, monitoring through registration, non-substantive Office Action replies, and delivery of the final registration certificate. The USPTO filing fee for one class ($350) is included in the $2,495. Additional classes are $750 each. Substantive Office Action responses, opposition proceedings, and post-registration maintenance (Section 8 and Section 9 filings, due at the 5-year and 10-year marks) are scoped separately, with a quoted fee before any work begins.

Yes. Filing without a search is the most expensive shortcut in trademark law. If your application gets refused for a likelihood-of-confusion conflict a search would have caught, you lose the USPTO filing fee and several months on your timeline. If a senior rights holder surfaces after you have launched and built traction, the cost of rebranding will exceed the cost of any search by a wide margin. Brand Locked includes the search inside the flat fee. If you want the search before you commit to filing, the Full Clearance + Opinion tier handles that and applies as a credit toward Brand Locked if you file.

Yes. You can file an intent-to-use application before your mark is in commerce, as long as you have a good-faith intent to use it. The USPTO processes the application normally, but the registration does not issue until you file a Statement of Use with a specimen showing the mark in actual commercial use. You get an initial 6-month window after the notice of allowance to file the Statement of Use, with up to five 6-month extensions available. Intent-to-use is the right path if you are about to launch, want to lock in a priority date, or are negotiating a deal that depends on the mark being secured.

It depends on what you want to protect. A standard character mark (the word) protects the literal text in any font, color, or styling, which is broader and usually more durable. A design mark (the logo) protects the specific visual treatment but does not protect the underlying word. Most brands file the word mark first, because the name is what travels across products, packaging, marketing, and platforms. The logo mark is filed later if the visual identity itself is distinctive enough to merit separate protection. We make the call based on how your brand actually shows up in the market.

Federal registration is almost always the right answer. State trademark registrations protect your mark only within that state, do not give you federal court access for infringement actions, do not support international filings, and are not recognized for platform enforcement (Amazon Brand Registry, social-platform takedowns, customs recordation). A California state trademark (filing fee $70 per class) is useful in narrow cases. A business operating only within California, no online sales, no out-of-state customers, no plans to expand. For most clients, the answer is federal first. If the state registration adds value on top of a federal filing, we will surface it. We do not file state trademarks as a substitute for federal protection.

An Office Action is a formal letter from the examining attorney raising an issue with your application. There are two categories. Non-substantive Office Actions cover technical or procedural issues (an unclear specimen, a corrected goods-and-services description, a missing disclaimer). These are handled inside the Brand Locked flat fee. Substantive Office Actions cover legal refusals (likelihood of confusion, descriptiveness, genericness). These require a written legal response and are scoped separately as a separate engagement, with a quoted fee before any work begins. If a substantive refusal is unwinnable, we will tell you and recommend the next move (modify, refile, or pivot). The deeper page on this is Office Action Responses & Appeals.

For a name, yes. Trademark protection attaches to the use of a mark in commerce to identify the source of goods or services. The process by which the name was generated is generally not relevant to USPTO registrability, as long as the mark is distinctive (not descriptive or generic) and not confusingly similar to a senior mark. For a logo, the analysis is more complicated. Pure machine-generated images currently fail copyright protection under US Copyright Office guidance, but trademark protection runs on a separate framework. As long as the design is used to identify the source of goods or services and meets the distinctiveness threshold, it can be registered as a trademark. Be aware that you can hold a registered trademark in a logo without holding copyright in the same image, which affects how you can stop someone else from using a similar design. We work through both layers in the clearance step before we file.

A US trademark protects you only in the United States. International protection requires filing in each country where you want rights, either directly with each country's IP office or through the Madrid Protocol (a single application that designates multiple member countries through WIPO). The most common path. File in the US first to lock in the priority date, then file a Madrid Protocol application within 6 months of the US filing to extend that priority date to other markets. StarGuard Law handles US and Canadian filings directly and coordinates Madrid Protocol filings for any other jurisdiction where you need protection. The deeper page on this is International Trademark & Madrid Protocol.