How to Protect Your Logo: Trademarking and Copyrighting?

A logo is the face of a brand. It represents the identity of a brand on every front. Therefore, it should be protected at all costs. That’s because if your brand gets viral, so does your logo design, but you fail to protect your logo as someone else starts using it, all your efforts can go in vain. The opposite party can enjoy the perks that must have belonged to you. Hence, the most essential thing you should do whilst working in the digital environment is to protect your assets side by side. So, to protect your logo, like other critical elements of your business, you should register a trademark and get copyrights of your logo. This blog post will enlighten you in detail on how you can secure your logo with the help of these techniques.

Trademarking and Copyrighting: A Way to Safeguard Your Logo

Opting for trademark or copyrights means you are focused on protecting your intellectual property. A trademark is used to get the exclusive rights of the business entities, and copyrights are used to secure the legal rights of using a creative piece of work. Both are overlapping terms. Businesses get benefits from each to keep you safe from unauthorized use. Let’s see what these terms mean.

Trademarking of Logos

Trademarking a logo means registering it with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). It is done to prevent the brand identity. This helps you get legal protection against copyrights, fraud, and counterfeits. As a result, if someone tries to misuse your logo, you can sue them legally and get a financial bounty for the loss you suffer. However, it is mandatory to file a unique trademark registration. That means you should ensure your application does not match an existing patent. Hence, your logo needs to be thoroughly unique. Therefore, you should keep your logo wholly original and unique. Suppose you don’t have the creative capacity to design a logo. In that case, you can take help from a logo maker to create an entirely different logo to become eligible for a trademark. Once you are sure about the originality of your brand logo, you can proceed to the trademark registration process.

Trademark Registration Process

To apply for a trademark, you should first figure out whether you need to do so. It is because you get all the exclusive rights once you create something thoroughly new and unique. Additionally, you are the first person to use that entity. It means if your logo design is totally different from all the existing logos, you may not have to register its patent if you use it in a particular geographic location. Nevertheless, if you want to brand yourself globally, you should register your logo patent quickly.

Your application should be flawless and error-free because a minor mistake can get your application rejected. Your fee also needs to be refunded. Therefore, take help from a patent or trademark attorney to avoid mishaps. The essential components:

1. Provide the name, address, and personal details of the entity applying for the trademark. It can be of an individual or a business.
2. Submit your final logo design and the number of products related to it.
3. Give a photo of the final version of your logo design in JPG format.
4. A JPG or PDF file visually represents how your logo looks engraved on a product. 
5. Lastly, ensure that you have chosen the colors in your logo because other entities can draw a logo similar to your shape but with different colors.

You can submit your application once you get all these things done correctly. When you submit your application, you get a specific serial number and government trademark attorney. The application review can take five to seven days. However, the time can extend to even months if there are some errors in your application. Nevertheless, if no similar patents or mistakes are found, your patent gets approved, making you the owner of the submitted logo design.

Enforcement

Once you successfully register your logo’s trademark, you should strive to enforce your rights to prevent misuse. Following are the practices you must adopt to do so:

Monitoring

The first thing that comes under the umbrella of enforcement of your trademark registry is monitoring your logo design. To do so, you should track where and how your logo has been used on the internet because sometimes scammers can use your details to fulfil their malicious purposes. Hence, to avoid that, you can take help from reverse image search to find if your logo is being used for some wrong purposes. All you need to do is to paste your logo picture into an image search engine. Consequently, it will load your screen with visually similar results. Following the outcome, you should ask them to take that down if you detect your logo being used without your permission on any platform. However, if they don’t do so, you can take the next step. Let’s see what that is.

Legal Action

The next stage of enforcing your trademark registry is to take legal action against the entities that exploit your logo. First, you should ask the platform authorities where your logo is being misused to ban the platform from violating your privacy. However, if that does not happen, you can use them legally with documentation. As a result, they will not only remove your logo from their channel but also pay you for the loss resulting from their actions. Moreover, this will set an example for others. Thus, no one will dare to misuse your identifications for commercial purposes next time.

Copyrighting of Logo

Copyrighting a logo seems similar to trademarking, but it is not. There is a big difference between them. When you go for copyright, you secure all the exclusive rights on the material and data where your logo is used. People can’t even use your photos and videos without your permission. If they do so, you can file copyright strikes against them by contacting the concerned authorities. Copyrighting aims to benefit from all your efforts for branding instead of letting any other use your content, i.e., images, text, or videos.

Your work must be original and unique to become eligible for copyrighting. Additionally, it should be in material form, and you must be the author or artist of that work. If your logo design fulfills all these requirements, you can register its copyrights to get exclusive rights.

Copyright Registration Process

Registration of copyrights creates a record of your copyrights in the U.S. copyright office. Once you provide details related to registration, your copyrights become effective immediately.

To file a copyright application, you need to fulfill the form and provide a fee and copies of the work you want to register. Before submitting your application, you should ensure that you have given the exact number of needed copies because the number does vary in different situations. You can register your copyrights online, but in some cases, you have to mail some documents that must be done to avoid any potential mishaps. After reviewing your application, the copyright registration office informs you about the proceedings via email, letter, or phone. If your application gets successful, you achieve the copyright registration certificate.

Enforcement

Like trademark enforcement, you can implement copyrights of your content, be it visual, audio, or written, by keeping a check on it. If you see any entity violating your privacy, you can take legal and code of conduct actions against them. 

Final Remarks

The trademark and copyright of your logo enable you to protect your digital assets. You should register them because you never know what belongs will go viral on the internet, making you an overnight sensation. Hence, it is better to secure your data to ensure that no one can enjoy the perks and advantages that only belong to you.