DYI Trademark Info - Trademarks pre-101
Someone on one of my email groups asked about putting the little
You own your trademark the moment you use it in connection with a product or service in commerce. And the moment you use it in commerce, you have superior rights (that means you can stop someone else's use) against anyone who uses a "confusingly similar" name in the same marketplace after you. So you don't have to put the (tm) notice there to own it, nor do you have to register it. But putting the (tm) next to it is like sewing your name in your underwear at camp. It's telling the world "I am claiming this as mine." It doesn't mean it is yours. You could have taken someone else's underwear and put in your label. But it puts people on notice that you are not giving it away.
If you put the (tm)out there and someone else has "superior rights" to you - in other words, they used a mark that is confusingly similar mark in the same marketplace before you, then putting the (tm) on there is meaningless.
Registering a trademark is one step beyond putting the (tm) on it. Registration puts more people on notice, it also gives you a few extra legal remedies and it allows you to use the little R in a circle. But it's not necessary in order to own the trademark.
As to doing your own online TM seach....
It depends on what you mean by "do a trademark search online?" Do you mean do a google search? Go to the US Patent and Trademark office and search there? Basically there is no absolutely way of knowing for absolutely positive that no one has used a name before you in a
particular marketplace. But if you do a search on various search engines, on the USPTO website and then I'd go to the secretary of state of your state (in California its www.sos.ca.gov ) and a few of the other larger states, or wherever you are wanting to do business AND if you put anything that might be confusingly similar to your name into the various search engines, you should be pretty good. Of course knowing what might be confusingly similar is an art, not a science.
The problem often is you will get some hits, and then you need to figure out if they are "confusingly similar" enough to be a problem.
