Trademark Prosecution Definition
The trademark prosecution definition refers to the legal process of examining a trademark application and registering the applied trademark.3 min read
The trademark prosecution definition refers to the legal process of examining a trademark application and registering the applied trademark for a product or service if it's found to be eligible.
A trademark identifies and distinguishes your goods or products from those of others by means of a unique name, logo, design, color, sound, or device.
The Advantages of Trademark Registration
Filing for federal registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) offers the following benefits:
- You can recover the costs, damages, and profits for infringement.
- You can use the registered mark symbol.
- The visibility of your trademark increases, which helps in preventing the adoption of similar marks by others.
- You can sue for infringement in a federal court.
- It becomes easier to prove infringement of your trademark since registration serves as a prima facie evidence of ownership.
- The registration serves as evidence that your mark is not confusingly similar to other marks in use.
Trademark Prosecution and Management
The trademark prosecution process seeks to determine whether the applied trademark is unique to the claimant and is different from other existing trademarks.
A trademark examiner basically looks at the following three things during prosecution:
- Strength: The strength of a trademark lies in its distinctiveness; a higher degree of distinctiveness reduces the chances of infringement.
- Type: The type of a trademark refers mainly to its text and its similarity to other registered words and slogans; physical characteristics of the mark are rarely considered.