Brian Russ Law, Inc. is a California trademark law firm centered on helping companies build and protect their brands and their business. We appreciate the need to differentiate your brand from your competition. A small business owner and serial entrepreneur, attorney Brian understands the struggles of small business owners and how securing brand protection is critical when setting your business apart from the competition. Brian works with corporations across the Golden State work through common trademarking issues like clearance searches, infringement assessment, trademark registration, USPTO office action responses, infringement litigation, use defense, and more. If you’re looking for top-notch trademark legal support in Santa Monica, then you’ve come to the right place. You can also check out our trademark-specific website at BrianTheTrademarkLawyer.com.
Santa Monica’s Trademark Attorney
What Is A Trademark Attorney?
A trademark lawyer is someone with experience in trademark registration, protection, and litigation support who regularly works with small businesses. You can hire a trademark lawyer to help give you peace of mind that your slogan is protectable and available for your exclusive use. When choosing a lawyer to protect you’re the brand of your enterprise, make sure to work with a lawyer who has no problem working in Santa Monica, like Brian Russ Law, Inc.
How Can a Trademark Law Firm Support Your Business?
A trademark lawyer's job is to help their clients protect their brands. A company is the best placed to protect its name before or shortly after its launch. Our firm's seen so many businesses drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on merchandise and marketing only to discover that they can't use their preferred name. Intellectual property is a critical issue for startups, especially when the brand and recognition are primary drivers of revenue from target markets. Give us a call if you want to lock down your business's brand with federal trademark protection.
What To Look For In a Trademark Lawyer
The worst thing a business owner can do to protect their name is to do nothing. Even though it's easy to do some trademark forms on your own, you are at risk of doing something wrong and cleaning up the mess will take 5x the time, money, and effort of doing it right in the first place. A good United States trademark attorney can help any size business in any industry across the world secure trademark protection in the United States. The qualities you should consider when securing legal counsel for your trademark is the experience of the lawyer, their online reviews, and how personable they are. Your attorney should be someone you can talk to about your brand. The better the synergy, the better your brand will thrive.
The Top Three Areas Small Businesses Need Trademark Support
1. BUSINESS NAME REGISTRATION
Creatives often think LLCs and DBA/FBN statements keep their names from being violated and that they are not violating others. This is not correct. Setting up an LLC or a Fictitious Business Name Statement does not equal trademark protection. The main issue here is that the Secretary of State and your county recorder don’t cross-reference trademarks with business names. You can get governmental approvals to use your name for your business, but those governmental agencies don’t check the federal trademark database. It's important for a business owner to retain legal counsel to help them assess the risks and benefits of their business name.
2. BRAND PROTECTION
Most small businesses need to protect their brands. Imagine this – you start a sandwich shop on the main drag of Santa Monica called “Tommy Tequila’s Good Eats” and you spend years building your reputation. But you don’t take steps to federally register your trademark for “Tommy Tequila’s Good Eats”. Then, you happen to go to Vegas for the weekend, and you find a brand new restaurant with the same exact name as your business. Sadly, your options for enforcement and protection would be limited since you have no federal protection for your brand’s name and the Vegas pub is across state lines. An even more common – and still hard – situation is what to do if your name brand slogan was federally protected by a third party before you started using yours.
3. INFRINGEMENT STRATEGY.
If you have a brand, then you need a strategy on what to do if someone infringes your brand. There are many cases where someone might innocently infringe your brand. Sometimes, having a law firm send a demand notice to the infringer will make them stop. If your trademark is being intentionally and maliciously exploited, you need to take appropriate measures to protect your trademark. You may need to file a state suit for a temporary and permanent injunction to stop the infringer, plus you can try to recover damages including attorney’s fees.
Trademary Attorney Brian Russ is Here to Serve Santa Monica Creatives
The answer is straightforward – contactconnect with} Brian Russ Law, Inc. today. We’re fielding inquiries from potential new clients every day. Having an lawyer on your team to protect your intellectual property can help you avoid costly mistakes and give you invaluable peace of mind.