A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, or design that helps the market identify and distinguish your goods or services from similar goods and services of other businesses. Common trademarks are brand names, names of products, names of services, logos, and taglines. Additionally, sounds, smells, tastes, scents, colors, and repeating patterns can be trademarked.

Your brand is the symbol of your entire business. Your brand is therefore worth what your business is worth. It’s baffling when we see business owners who are having a hard time investing $999 or more to securely protect their brand from being stolen by their competitors or hijacked by squatters. These same people have no problem spending thousands of dollars on frivolous items like new phones, computers, etc. The message these people are sending to the world is that the new phone or other frivolous item is more valuable than their brand. Without your brand, you would not have a business. If you don’t value your brand, you don’t value your business period. If you don’t think your brand is worth trademarking for $999, it’s not worth trademarking period, and your business is probably not worth building either.

You can use the TM symbol whenever you want, even before filing a trademark application. The TM symbol simply means that you consider yourself to have “common law” rights to your trademark, and it has very little legal significance. In the United States, you can only use the ® symbol next to your trademark when it is fully registered at the federal level, which is what we help you with.

A quick Google search will reveal many do-it-yourself “trademark filing services” like LegalZoom, Trademarkia, and others that claim to have the “best trademark registration services” or “best trademark filing company.” As a law firm having actual trademark registration attorneys, we find these claims laughable because none of these trademark filing services provide any real service at all. Filing a trademark application through one of these companies is essentially the same as filing a trademark application yourself through the USPTO’s portal system. These do-it-yourself companies charge you a fee to copy and paste some information you enter in a form and then submit the application to the USPTO on your behalf. What these companies don’t tell you is that they will be nowhere to be found after your application is filed. You’ll be on your own the minute after they take your money and submit your application. They will not see your application through to completion, up until registration, and it will therefore be you against the USPTO examining attorney in charge of examining your application. Most clients fail to recognize that most of the legal work is done during the time between filing and registration, not at filing. These “do-it-yourself” trademark companies are like criminal attorneys who show up to court on the first day of a two week trial only to introduce their clients to the judge and then leave their clients behind for the rest of the trial. Like in criminal court, the trademark registration process is adversarial in nature. So, if you’ve decided that you don’t want to navigate the trademark registration process by yourself, using one of these do-it-yourself companies will ultimately put you in a place you don’t want to be in. While many business owners are lured into the trap that they can “do it themselves” and not have any significant consequences, this is not true. The United States is the most difficult country in the world to register a trademark, and the trademark registration process in the U.S. takes approximately 1 year and is fraught with pitfalls. The University of North Carolina completed a study several years ago that found trademark attorneys can increase the likelihood of success of a trademark application by over 50%. The reason for this is that a trademark application is a highly complex legal proceeding even though many online companies and articles make it sound easy. The data here is overwhelming and clear in that trademark attorneys give business owners a much higher probability of success in obtaining and securing trademark rights than if the attorney is not used. If you dislike the idea of paying trademark fees to do-it-yourself companies such as LegalZoom, Trademark Engine, Trademarkia, and others for the “privilege” of doing all of the work yourself, then we encourage you to contact us instead. We will show you why choosing to work with responsive and detail-oriented US trademark attorneys who perform all work from start-to-finish in a prompt and efficient manner is truly the best option for aspiring trademark owners and business owners and will give you a significantly better chance of securing a trademark registration than if you file a trademark on your own or through one of these do-it-yourself companies.

Yes.  We’re so confident that we offer the best value trademark legal services in the world that we’ll file you trademark application for free if you can find another law firm or trademark filing service that offers what we do. Contact any law firm or trademarking company and ask them these 2 questions:

1. Will a licensed U.S. attorney handle my trademark application from start to finish, from filing up until registration?
2. Do you offer a fixed price under $999 that will cover the entire trademark registration process from start to finish, including unlimited responses to any and all office actions, including likelihood of confusion and descriptiveness refusals?

If you find ANYONE who, like us, answers “yes” to all 2 of these questions, we will file your trademark for free.

Our trademark form offers the option to only hire us for a search and the accompanying legal opinion for $250. If the results of that search are largely negative, we would be happy to perform a second search and give you a second legal opinion for free. As with the Premium Package, the free backup search can only be used as a replacement for your first proposed trademark if you decide not to move forward with filing an application for your first choice of trademark.

The Premium Package is designed for people who want an attorney to handle the entire trademark registration process from filing up until registration, wanting a totally risk-free way to trademark their brand. The Standard is designed for people who are heavily invested in their brand and have been selling goods and/or providing services, knowing that they’re not going to change it at this point, and for whatever reason don’t have a legal budget to purchase the Premium Package.

The government filing fee is calculated based on the number of classes you need and is paid to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) when your trademark application is filed. MLG charges a flat government filing fee of $350 per class. So, the more classes you need, the more expensive it becomes. Note that the government filing fee is paid to the USPTO and is therefore not a fee we keep. See the question below for more information on trademark classes.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office organizes products and services according to specific categories, or classes. There are 45 classes, 34 of which are product classes and 11 of which are service classes. If you want your trademark to cover more than a single product or service, and those products or services fall into more than one class (for example, dog leashes and clothing), additional fees are required for each additional class. The USPTO charges a government filing fee of $350 per class. So, the more classes you include in your application, the more expensive it becomes.

While most of our clients don’t need more than one trademark class, the answer to this question really depends on whether you’re using or intend to use your trademark in association with both goods and services as well. The answer also depends on the type of goods and/or services you’re offering or intending to offer under your applied-for trademark. We will handle all of this for you if you hire us.

If a minor office action is issued by the USPTO, we will file a response to overturn the minor office action for free. If a major office action is issued by the USPTO, you will need to pay for our standalone office action response service. See the question below to learn more about what an office action is.

An office action is a refusal or rejection that the USPTO issues in the form of a letter if it thinks there’s an error or problem with your trademark application. A minor office action is issued by the examining attorney at the USPTO when the submitted application contains minor errors such as typographical errors or improperly formatted documents. A major office action is issued by the examining attorney at the USPTO when the submitted application contains major errors, resulting in registration refusals that will require extensive research and legal arguments to overcome. If the examining attorney at the USPTO determines there is a conflict between your trademark and a trademark that is either registered or pending in the USPTO because the marks are similar in sound, appearance, or meaning, he/she will refuse registration of your mark for likelihood of confusion.

We charge a fixed price of $699 to draft and file a response to a major office action, which includes conducting research, drafting, and filing any legal argument that might be needed to overturn the major USPTO office action. This price applies if we’re taking over an application you filed on your own or through another law firm of filing service, or if you had us file the application originally but you picked the Standard Package instead of the Premium Package. If you had us file the application originally and you picked the Premium Package, we will respond to all major office actions for free

No. Unlike our competitors, we do not charge our clients any fees to overturn minor USPTO office actions. Minor office actions are issued by the USPTO when there is a minor error or issue with your application. See the question above for more information on what a minor office action is. If you want your trademark to cover more than a single product or service, and those products or services fall into more than one class (for example, dog leashes and clothing), additional fees are required for each additional class. The USPTO charges a government filing fee of $350 per class. So, the more classes you include in your application, the more expensive it becomes. In addition, if you are not using your brand in commerce for all of the goods or services listed on your application on the day we file, we will have to file under an intent-to-use basis, which means that if the USPTO approves your application for registration, you will incur an additional $100 government filing fee per-class plus a $250 legal fee for labor and processing near the end of the application process in order to complete registration. Note that if you are already using your brand name or logo in commerce when we wile your application, you will not have to pay this fee.

Yes, you can file a trademark application under intent-to-use before you have made any sales of your products or services in the marketplace. You will eventually need to show use of the mark on the goods or services identified in your application before your mark can be registered. This means that you must eventually submit evidence of use of the trademark by filing a Statement of Use, so expect additional costs to cover subsequent work. MLG charges $250 in legal fees to prepare your specimens and file a Statement of Use along with a $100 per-class government filing fee, which is paid to the USPTO when we file your Statement of Use.

Yes, call us at +1 800-651-7301. Unlike other law firms who charge hundreds of dollars for phones calls, we offer unlimited phone time and do not bill our clients or prospective clients for phone calls. Unlike those “trademark legal services” who have underpaid, under-qualified customer service representatives answering their phones, we have actual U.S. licensed trademark attorneys answering our phones. Though you may call us at any time, we hope you understand that there may be times when we are unable to answer the phone because we have upcoming deadlines or a plethora of tasks to complete. If we do not answer the phone, leave us a message and we will return your call within one (1) business day. You can also send us an email at info@trademarkattorneyslosangeles.com and we will get back to you within one (1) business day.

If you pick the Standard Package, we can prepare and submit your trademark application within one (1) to two (2) business days. If you pick the Premium Package, we can prepare and submit your trademark application within three (3) to five (5) business days. Once your application is submitted, we should hear an initial answer from the USPTO after four (4) months to six (6) months. If everything goes right, you should have a fully registered trademark in nine (9) to twelve (12) months, at which point you can stop using the TM symbol and start using the ® symbol next to your brand.

In the United States, a federal trademark can potentially last forever as long as it remains in use and is periodically maintained/renewed.

Yes, to maintain your trademark registration and keep it alive, you must use your trademark in commerce, and you must file certain documents at regular intervals to show that you’re continuing to use your trademark. We send courtesy email reminders to our clients when they have an upcoming deadline for a maintenance filing.

To keep your trademark alive, you must file a Section 8 Declaration of Use between the fifth (5th) and sixth (6th) year of registration to show that you’re continuing to use your trademark. In addition, you must file a Section 9 request to renew your registration and an additional Section 8 Declaration between the ninth (9th) and tenth (10th) year of registration and every subsequent ten (10) years (calculated from the registration date). Click here to engage MLG for the renewal or maintenance of your registered trademark.

Yes. You can file a trademark in the United States as a foreign citizen or business as long as you are represented by a U.S. licensed attorney like us. You do not need a U.S. address to file a trademark in the United States and there is no extra cost or paperwork required.