Category: Trademarks

Ten Essential Rules for Internet Brand Names

1. Make sure that the .com domain name is available.  Only select names that will correspond to a .com domain name. Consumers will head straight to the .com. Have you ever entered .net or .biz in a URL? I haven’t. And if I can’t find the web site on my first try, I jump to Google®. If the .com domain is not available, select a different name and don’t fall victim to the “hyphenated” domain name. Have you ever used – or thought of using – a hyphen in a domain name?

2. Keep it short and simple.  With all of today’s advertising noise and clutter, keeping the name short and simple is critical. Difficult-to-remember domain names are likely to result in misspellings, which may result in the loss of revenues to “typo-squatters.” Typo-squatters will “steal” your misspelled domain name and divert Internet traffic from your web site while generating revenue in the process. Don’t let that happen to you. Some of the best short and easy-to-remember Internet brand names are Yahoo, Amazon, Yelp and Woot.

3. Select a name that is alliterative.  Brand names that are alliterative are easy to remember. Dunkin Donuts, Kristy Kreme, Blackberry and Roto Rooter are all good examples.

4. Select a name that is speakable.  A name that is speakable is also easy to remember. Speakable names tend to receive more word-of-mouth advertising. Speakable names include Sears, Colgate, Pepsi and AeroMotive. Unspeakable names include Tokico, PLP and Chipolte. Names that are difficult to pronounce are difficult to remember, which spells disaster.

5. Spellability.  Be sure that your Internet brand name is easy to spell. Hard to spell domain names tend to lose Internet traffic for their owners. They also tend to be victims of Internet pirates a/k/a “typo-squatters.”

6. Suggestive names.  Names that are suggestive of the product category will tend to attract customers and may even help build customer loyalty. A suggestive name helps customers identify the attributes of a product and what a brand represents. Suggestive names include Die Hard, Close Up and Block Buster.

7. Reserve other domain name extensions.  Registering the .com domain name is critical. But don’t forget to make defensive registrations for other extensions, including .net, .biz and .mobi. Registering other domain name extensions is an inexpensive way to defend against third parties from registering your brand names with other extensions and then profiting from them.

8. Reserve domain names for commonly misspelled terms.  If your name can be spelled in several different ways, be sure to register, at a minimum, the .com domain name for that common misspelling. Reserving common misspellings of your brand name is another inexpensive way to prevent Internet pirates from diverting Internet traffic from your site.

9. Don’t forget to renew your domain name.  Failing to renew a domain name can result in its loss. Not good for an Internet company! If you can afford it, apply for the longest possible term, and then calendar the renewal date.

10. Don’t fall victim to domain name renewal scams.  Don’t rely upon third-party services to renew your domain name unless you have an existing relationship with that company. Unsolicited renewal invitations should be ignored. Some of those unsolicited renewal invitations are scams. Some of those companies will simply take your money and not pay the renewal resulting in the loss of your domain name.  Internet companies that lose their domain names lose what may be their most valuable assets.

How to Acquire United States Trademark Rights

How to Acquire Trademark Rights

In the United States, unlike many foreign countries, trademark rights stem from use, not from registration. Use of your trademark must be “public,” however, and must be used to designate certain products and/or services. The mark cannot simply be a “project name” or a name used internally between company employees.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Campus

Actual sales/shipments of products bearing the mark may not be necessary to create trademark rights. Pre-sales activities, such as attending trade shows, placing advertisements and giving product presentations to prospective buyers may be enough to establish trademark rights as against subsequent users of the same or confusingly similar mark. However, a federal trademark registration will not issue until your mark has been put to use in connection with the actual sale of your products or carrying out of your service.

While registration is not required to create trademark rights in the United States (and in certain other countries), securing federal trademark protection is a best practice and carries with it certain valuable rights, presumptions, and remedies for trademark infringement. Even if a mark has not yet been put to use, a federal trademark application may still be filed on an “intent to use” basis, thereby potentially reserving rights in that mark for your company. That holds true even if a competitor were to begin use of the same or confusingly similar mark after the filing of your application but before your company’s use of the mark.

Planning ahead and properly clearing marks and filing “intent-to-use” federal trademark applications at least four months in advance of product launches is a recommended strategy for securing rights in marks before their actual use. That strategy may also avoid the all too common last-minute scrambling to find available names.  You know, that last-minute Friday afternoon exercise of “the product launches on Monday and we really really really need you to approve this name, Roger!”

Yeah, that one.