SIG Meeting*Zoom meeting details will be emailed to registrants 24 hours before the event.*
Your Trademark Fortress Must Have These Five Walls or Your Kingdom Will Fall
Businesses regularly make mistakes in picking and maintaining trademarks, which leads to difficult and expensive problems for the lifetime of the trademark. These mistakes include:
- Picking a potentially descriptive, merely geographic, or generic name.
- Not having a trademark attorney perform clearance on the trademark before adopting it.
- Falling in love with the new brand/name before having it vetted by legal counsel and then being unwilling to move off of it when the vetting reveals substantial problems.
- Not performing regular infringement watching and policing.
We’ll discuss what is a good process for picking a strong and protectable trademark. We’ll also discuss what are your options if your trademark is established but flawed, such as being generic, merely geographic, too descriptive, or crowded by highly similar marks? Finally, we’ll discuss best practices for keeping your trademark healthy, strong, and free of infringement.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding the five elements of building a strong brand/trademark fortress.
- Best practices in doing a new branding.
- Making the best out of trademarks with flaws.
- Going beyond registration: keeping your brand/trademark healthy and strong.
Co-host: John B. Farmer
John B. Farmer is a member of the Leading-Edge Law Group, PLC, an intellectual property (“IP”) boutique law firm in Richmond, Virginia. His practice focuses on trademarks and technology deals. He regularly teaches other attorneys about trademark law basics and recent developments in the field.
He served a three-year term as chairman of the Trademark Public Advisory Committee of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He writes a monthly IP and technology law column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He is the founder and moderator of the annual Virginia Intellectual Property Legal Institute, presented by Virginia CLE, which program recently marked its 20th year. He is a go-to speaker for Virginia CLE (Continuing Legal Education) on IP issues, particularly trademarks and licensing. He is listed in the top rank of Virginia IP attorneys by Chambers USA, Best Lawyers in America, and Super Lawyers. He is a past chair of the IP Section of the Virginia State Bar. He is a past president of the Greater Richmond Intellectual Property Law Association. He graduated from the University of Virginia and its law school. After graduation from law school, he clerked for the Honorable Donald S. Russell, Judge of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and for the Honorable James C. Cacheris, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division.
Sponsored by: Leading-Edge Law Group, PLC
