Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Making A Trademark For A Home Business Opportunity Online

By Myles Krueger

It is always important to protect yourself and your assets as a business owner of a home business opportunity online. One of the first ways to do this is by getting a trademark approved by the US government in order to protect your company name. This will be important down the road as you get bigger.

The office through which you trademark is called the United States Patent and Trademark Office. If you go online to their website you will actually find that they provide a form called the Trademark Electronic Application System of the TEAS where you can finish most of the process at their website with step by step direction.

The normal fee for this can be around $325 depending what you need to get done with it. Probably one of the smartest things you can do is get help from those that know what they are doing with a trademark if this is your first time. The USPTO provides a twenty four hour customer service number on their site where you can contact them for help with filling out the form.

They can only do so much for you because they are not trained to help with business philosophy or branding so I suggest that you find yourself a good lawyer that will actually help you through this whole process to find a branded name that you can trademark that will benefit you and your company. They are great to bounce ideas off of so you can get a general direction on how to approach this process.

This can be overwhelming and the approval process can be tedious because it can take several months for them to approve or not approve this trademark. They can be denied if they feel that your name is too general or if you are infringing upon another companies trademark.

If you are an American citizen you can turn in an application, but the same can be said for a non citizen also. You will probably have to get an EIN number in order to turn one in, but there are no worries. If you are out of the country you can always have a domestic representative like a lawyer help you by filling out the form for you.

Before you have completed the process make sure that you have a name that is very arbitrary because you don't want to have to go through this process again down the road because you have changed products or business philosophies. Make it easy on yourself initially so you don't put yourself into a corner.

Now that you have figured out a trademark and have it approve take some time to enjoy it because you have possibly your first piece of intellectual property. This will be a lifesaver down the road as you face stiff competition and get bigger.

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