You have a great business name, product name, or service name. It means something to you, and it appeals to customers. You’d be in trouble if someone else started using it to steal your customers. So how do you protect that name from being used by others in ways that hurt your business?
Trademark registration.
A name is words, so why doesn’t copyright apply? There are long answers, but the short answer is that the law says so.
Trademarks are for business names, slogans, logos, product names, and some types of product packaging. Essentially, trademarks are for the things that identify the brand or that a product or service is being offered by a particular brand.
Copyright is for artistic works, and there can be overlap between trademarks and copyright. A logo could possibly be both trademarked as a brand identifier and copyrighted as an artistic work.
Copyright doesn’t apply to short brand identifiers like names, slogans, and product names, despite the creative effort that may have gone into their creation.
Call King Business and Patent Law, PLLC at 217-714-8558 or go to https://kingpatentlaw.com/appointments for help with trademarking your brand identifiers and protecting those trademarks through monitoring and enforcement.
