Brian Russ Law, Inc. is a California trademark law office focused on helping corporations build and protect their brands and their business. We understand the need to differentiate your brand from your competition. A small business owner and serial entrepreneur, attorney Brian gets the worries of small business owners and how securing brand protection is vital when setting your business apart from the competition. Brian works with corporations throughout California 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 advice in South Pasadena, then you’ve come to the right place. You can also visit our trademark-specific website at BrianTheTrademarkLawyer.com.
South Pasadena’s Trademark Attorney
What Is A Trademark Attorney?
A trademark attorney is someone with experience in trademark registration, protection, and litigation support who regularly works with small businesses. Trademark attorneys 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 South Pasadena, like Brian Russ Law, Inc.
How Can a Trademark Attorney Help Your Business?
Protecting brands is a trademark attorney’s primary role. Businesses are in the best position to protect their brand if they take a proactive strategy. 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 protection is important for startups, especially those that depend on their branding to engage users. Give us a call if you want to lock down your business's name with federal trademark protection.
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. 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 8x the time, money, and effort of doing it right in the first place. A good United States trademark attorney can help any size company in any industry across the globe secure trademark protection in the United States. When choosing a trademark lawyer, consider their experience and online reviews as well as how personable they are. You should find a lawyer that you are comfortable with discussing company strategy with because that will lead to the best synergy for your business.
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 true. 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. So you can get the Secretary of State and county approval to use your business name, but you’re still exposed to potential trademark infringement liability because your name might infringe on someone’s trademark. It’s incumbent on the business owner to retain counsel to assess the trademark risk of using your business name.
2. BRAND PROTECTION
Small businesses have a lot to worry about, but brand protection should not be one of them. Imagine this – you start a hot dog restaurant on the main drag of South Pasadena called “Tommy Tequila’s Good Eats” and you spend decades building your reputation. But you never get around to registering a federal trademark for “Tommy Tequila’s Good Eats”. 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 difficult – situation is what to do if your name brand name was federally protected by a third party before you started using yours.
3. INFRINGEMENT STRATEGY.
Make sure you have a playbook in place to protect your name if someone infringes your brand. There may be cases where people infringe on your trademark without realizing it. When an infringement occurs, sending a cease-and-desist notice to the offender can make them stop. In other cases, where the offender is intentionally and maliciously infringing your brand, you need to be prepared to take steps to fight them. A state lawsuit may be necessary to get a temporary and permanent injunction to stop the infringer. You can also try to recover damages including lost profits.
Trademary Attorney Brian Russ is Ready to Serve South Pasadena Creatives
The answer is simple – callconnect with} Brian Russ Law, Inc. today. We’re fielding calls from potential new clients every day. Having an attorney on your team to protect your intellectual property can help you avoid costly mistakes and give you invaluable peace of mind.