TM for Authors and Speakers
Posted on | December 28, 2008 | No Comments
You may know that you cannot trademark the title of a single book or speech. So, how do you protect your brand?
Simple: you use the title of your book and speech as the brand for an entire service package. Then, instead of trying to register your trademark in the books (printed materials) classification, you register the brand in the education and entertainment services classification. Then enforce your mark if anyone enters either category.
Remember to always place the “TM” superscript next to your brand when you’re using the title AS a brand. This stakes your claim and puts people on notice that you intend this title to be an indicator of YOU as the source of the relevant goods and/or services.
Do NOT use the (R) superscript until you have a registration certificate from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in your hands.
Finally, note that a TM application has a filing fee of $275-325. These are non-refundable. So, I strongly encourage you to hire an experienced TM lawyer to handle the application for you. I’ve seen far to many examples of people trying to do these by themselves to save a few hundred dollars, then messing it up, and ending up spending far more than if they would have just hired help in the first place.
Feel free to submit questions.
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