Brian Russ Law, Inc. is a California trademark law firm centered on helping companies build and protect their brands and their business. We understand the need to distinguish your brand from your competitors. A small business owner and serial entrepreneur, lawyer Brian recognizes the struggles of small business owners and how securing brand protection is vital when setting your business apart from the competition. Brian works with businesses across the Golden State work through common trademar 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 Rosa, then you’ve come to the right place. You can also check out our trademark-specific website at BrianTheTrademarkLawyer.com.

What Is A Trademark Attorney?

Small businesses should spend their time running their business and not getting tied up with the intricacies of trademark law, which should be left to a trademark lawyer. Trademark lawyers can generally do most work on a flat-fee basis and operate independently of the larger firms that bill too much for too little. When choosing a lawyer to protect you’re the brand of your company, make sure to work with a lawyer who has no problem working in Santa Rosa, like Brian Russ Law, Inc. 

How Can a Trademark Lawyer Empower Your Business?

Protecting brands is a trademark lawyer's primary role. A business is the best placed to protect its brand 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 find 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 consumers. If you need to get the name of your company trademarked, give us a call. 

What To Look For In a Trademark Law Fim

The worst thing a business entrepreneur can do to protect their name is to do nothing. Equally problematic to doing nothing when working on trademarks is to do-it-yourself without an attorney's support. A good United States trademark lawyer can help any size company in any industry across the world secure trademark protection in the United States. The traits you should consider when securing legal counsel for your trademark is the experience of the attorney, their online reviews, and how personable they are. Your lawyer 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
A lot of entrepreneurs think that setting up an LLC or a DBA/FBN statement means their name is trademarked to protect from challenge. This is not correct. Setting up an LLC or a Doing Business As Statement does not equal trademark protection. The Secretary of State and your county recorder don’t cross-reference your business name with the trademark database. You can get government approval to use your name for a business, but those agencies will not detect trademark infringement. It's important for any business owner to retain a lawyer to assess the trademark risk of using 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 Rosa called “Tommy Tequila’s Good Eats” and you spend decades building your reputation. But you don’t take steps to federally register your trademark for “Tommy Tequila’s Good Eats”. Life can be a gamble sometimes. You end up in Vegas and find out that your restaurant has the same name as a year-old pub on The Strip. Sadly, your options for enforcement and protection would be limited since you have no federal protection for your brand’s name and the Vegas diner is across state lines. Another tricky scenario is how to deal with a cease-and-desist notice when your brand name is the same as one that was federally registered by another person prior to you using yours. 
3. INFRINGEMENT STRATEGY.
Make sure you have a strategy in place to protect your brand if someone infringes your brand. It's important to be aware of how your trademark might be infringed on by others. In some cases, the infringer will stop when a lawyer sends a letter demanding that they stop. willfully and maliciously infringing your brand, you need to be prepared to take steps to fight them. You may need to file a federal 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 Available to Serve Santa Rosa Businesses

The answer is easy – 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 brand can help you avoid costly mistakes and give you invaluable peace of mind.