Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Care About Trademarks

1. Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Care About Trademarks

2. Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Care About Trademarks EVERYONE deals with trademarks (brands) on a daily basis. As consumers, our purchasing decisions are constantly influenced by trademarks. As business people, we should have a better understanding of why trademarks are so important to effective commerce.

3. 1. Trademarks make it easy for consumers to find you. • Trademarks help you distinguish your products and services from those of competitors and help identify you as the source. • Trademarks indicate a consistent level of quality of your products and services.

4. 1. Trademarks make it easy for consumers to find you. • Awareness of your brand and the goodwill embodied in your trademark can often take decades to establish. • Aggregate cost of advertising, promotion, marketing, and sales efforts can easily reach into tens of millions or even billions of dollars, depending on the product / service.

5. 1. Trademarks make it easy for consumers to find you. • Differentiating your product / service from competitors is increasingly difficult to achieve, especially over a protracted period.

6. 1. Trademarks make it easy for consumers to find you. • Trademarks are the most efficient commercial communication tool ever devised to: • “cut through the clutter”; • capture the consumer’s attention; and • make your products / services stand out.

7. 2. Trademarks help prevent marketplace confusion. • Trademarks protect the consuming public by preventing confusion as to the source of goods or services.

8. 2. Trademarks help prevent marketplace confusion. • If the product made under a brand turns out to be defective, consumers have accurate information about the source of a product and can return it to the manufacturer or supplier for a refund.

9. 2. Trademarks help prevent marketplace confusion. • Trademarks give consumers the ability to protect themselves by relying upon known brands of products or services.

10. 2. Trademarks help prevent marketplace confusion. • Trademarks provide consumer convenience by allowing consumers to identify (by word, logo, slogan, package design, or other indicators of origin) which product or service they would like to purchase or to avoid purchasing.

11. 2. Trademarks help prevent marketplace confusion. • Trademarks provide consumer convenience by allowing consumers to base their purchasing decisions on what they have heard, read, or experienced themselves.

12. 2. Trademarks help prevent marketplace confusion. • Trademarks motivate a consistent level of quality, helping the consumer to decide whether to purchase a desirable product or service again or to avoid an undesirable one.

13. 3. Trademarks are among the most economically efficient communication tools. • Trademarks dramatically reduce the costs of decision-making by allowing consumers to rapidly select the desired product or service from among competitive offerings.

14. 3. Trademarks are among the most economically efficient communication tools. • Trademarks can wrap up in a single brand or logo intellectual and emotional attributes and messages about your: • company; • reputation; • products and services; and • consumers’ lifestyles, aspirations, and desires.

15. 3. Trademarks are among the most economically efficient communication tools. • Trademarks can work effectively across borders, cultures, and languages. • Famous marks can be recognized as brands even when the native population speaks a different language and reads a different alphabet.

16. 4. Trademarks are your most enduring assets. • Trademarks are one of the few assets that can provide you with a long-term competitive advantage.

17. 4. Trademarks are your most enduring assets. • Trademarks are usually the only business asset you have that can appreciate in value over time.

18. 4. Trademarks are your most enduring assets. • Trademarks are leverageable – they provide value beyond your core business, and can pave the way for expansion (or acquisition, if desired) of your business.

19. 4. Trademarks are your most enduring assets. • Brand Expansions: • KELLOGG’S – from “ready-to-eat cereals” to “snack bars and breakfast bars” • ARMANI – from “runway apparel” to “perfumes and eyewear”

20. 4. Trademarks are your most enduring assets. • Brand Extensions: • VIRGIN – from airline services to entertainment media and carbonated drinks

21. 5. Trademarks support stronger sales volume, stronger margins, and can provide price maintenance legally. • It is often difficult to see significant differences among competing products. • Your brand can be the critical factor in driving the consumer’s purchase decision!

22. 5. Trademarks support stronger sales volume, stronger margins, and can provide price maintenance legally. • The price variance among competitive offerings can also be substantial, often by 100% or more in the same setting, such as a newspaper. Once again, your brand can make the difference.

23. Trademarks can makehiring easier. • People prefer working for well-known and well-regarded brands and their companies.

24. Trademarks can makehiring easier. • Popular brands generally reflect successful businesses, which tend to have better employment opportunities, remuneration and benefits, and potential for career advancement.

25. Trademarks can makehiring easier. • Popular brands are often inspirational and aspirational, qualities that feed into a person’s natural ambition.

26. Trademarks can makehiring easier. • Because popular brands inspire positive feelings in people’s minds, they make employment opportunities more attractive to candidates.

27. Trademarks can makehiring easier. • For the same reasons, employee retention can be higher for popular brands.

28. 7. Trademarks can be a bargain. • A bargain to obtain and maintain: • Government filing fees can be as low as $275 in the United States to obtain trademark registration. • Only a few hundred dollars more in government fees are necessary to maintain registration over a ten-year term.

29. 7. Trademarks can be a bargain. • Potentially infinite lifespan with renewals (as long as the mark is used in commerce): • COLT (first registered in 1889) • QUAKER (1895) • PEPSI-COLA (1896) • MERCEDES (1900)

30. 7. Trademarks can be a bargain. • Trademarks share attributes with other forms of property, like real estate, as they can be: • Bought and Sold (“Assignments”) • in the acquisition of a business • in the acquisition of a specific product line

31. 7. Trademarks can be a bargain. • Trademarks share attributes with other forms of property, like real estate, as they can be: • Pledged (as security, like a mortgage) • to secure loans to a business

32. 7. Trademarks can be a bargain. • Trademarks share attributes with other forms of property, like real estate, as they can be: • Licensed (like renting or leasing) • character merchandising (entertainment, movies, television) • sports endorsements and sponsorships • co-branding promotions, sweepstakes, contests

33. Visual: Words Slogans Alpha-numeric Non-English words and characters Non-Roman alphabet words and characters Position / Location Logos and other designs Shapes Colors Three-dimensional objects Position / Location Motion 8. Trademarks are a very flexible and creative form of intellectual property protection.

34. 8. Trademarks are a very flexible and creative form of intellectual property protection. • Auditory • Music • U.S. Registration No. 2315261 (Intel) • U.S. Registration No. 3034331 (McDonald’s) • U.S. Registration No. 2799689 (AOL) • Sounds • U.S. Registration No. 3020512 (“wild cat growling”) • U.S. Registration No. 2827972 (“cricket chirping”) • Voices • U.S. Registration No. 2790126 (“You’ve Got Cash”)

35. 8. Trademarks are a very flexible and creative form of intellectual property protection. • Olfactory • Smells and Scents • U.S. Registration No. 2560618 (bubble-gum scent) • U.S. Registration No. 2596156 (strawberry scent) • U.S. Registration No. 2463044 (cherry scent) • U.S. Registration No. 2568512 (grape scent) • Tastes • Tactile

36. 9. Trademarks open the way for businesses to most effectively utilize the Internet. • Trademarks are often the “top-of-mind” address for an Internet user seeking information about a company and its products / services.

37. 9. Trademarks open the way for businesses to most effectively utilize the Internet. • The same commercial magnetism of a brand that drives repeat purchases in the bricks-and-mortar world also drives visitors to a website. • Higher traffic on a website translates into higher rankings on search engine results, bringing even more traffic.

38. 9. Trademarks open the way for businesses to most effectively utilize the Internet. • As a result of the importance of the Internet to marketing, it is very important to obtain desirable domain names at the same time that a trademark is adopted. • Only one domain name consisting of the trademark is permitted in a given Top Level Domain (like .com).

39. 9. Trademarks open the way for businesses to most effectively utilize the Internet. • The Internet also has the potential for widescale unauthorized use of your brand, requiring vigilance to police both proper use of your brand and infringements of it: • META tags • Embedded or hidden text • Counterfeits and design knockoffs • Gray market goods

40. 10. Trademarks are one of the most effective weapons against unfair competition. • In the United States, deceptive and misleading advertising is prohibited by: • consumer protection laws; • unfair competition laws; and • the U.S. trademark statute itself.

41. 10. Trademarks are one of the most effective weapons against unfair competition. • Of all the forms of intellectual property, the courts and administrative agencies are often most familiar with trademarks. • Courts are more inclined to grant remedies when unfair competition is present.

42. 10. Trademarks are one of the most effective weapons against unfair competition. • BUT, trademark laws are not meant to prevent the fair use of a competitor’s trademarks in comparative advertising, as long as the information in the advertisement is not itself deceptive or misleading.

43. Conclusion • Trademarks make it easy for consumers to find you. • Trademarks help prevent confusion, deception, and mistake in the marketplace. • Trademarks are among the most economically efficient communication tools ever developed, for businesses and consumers alike. • Trademarks are your most enduring assets. • Trademarks support stronger sales volume, stronger margins, and can provide price maintenance legally.

44. Conclusion • Trademarks can make hiring easier. People prefer working for well-known and well-regarded brands and their companies. • Trademarks can be a bargain to obtain and maintain, as government filing and maintenance fees tend to be much lower than the fees for patents. • Trademarks are a very flexible and creative form of intellectual property protection. • Trademarks open the way for businesses to most effectively utilize the Internet. • Trademarks are one of the most effective weapons against unfair competition and are often easier and cheaper to enforce than any other form of intellectual property.