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Using Trademarks and Patents Together = Double Protection for your Business

Guest post by: David Owens

Article Overview: By having both a registered trademark and a granted patent, a business' products or services can be protected in two distinct ways.

Using Trademarks and Patents Together = Double Protection for your Business

A trademark is a distinctive word, name, phrase, symbol, design, or other device used by a company or person to distinguish its products or services from the products or services of other companies. Trademarks are basically brands, and you can protect your trademark or brand by securing the associated trademark rights. These rights allow you to prevent others from using a confusingly similar trademark or brand. Trademarks are one form of "intellectual property," and trademark law is used to protect a business' trademark from improper use of that trademark, or a confusingly similar trademark, by another business. A registered trademark allows its owner to stop others from using a confusingly similar trademark, which could result in the loss of customers who purchase a product from one company believing that it comes from the other company. The important point to keep in mind, however, is that trademark law only protects the trademark itself and generally does not protect any other inherent aspect of the goods or services themselves. The protection of other aspects of a business' goods or services is left to other areas of intellectual property law.

Patents are another form of intellectual property. Patents and patent law are used to protect inventions. A patent confers the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the invention in the United States for a term of 20 years from the filing date of the patent application. "Utility" patents protect inventions that are useful, novel, and nonobvious in light of what has been done before and include articles of manufacture (e.g., products), machines, processes, compositions of matter, and improvements to each of those. Therefore, if business' goods or services includes or incorporates an invention, additional intellectual property protection related to the goods or services may be obtained through a patent. In fact, businesses will often seek both trademark and patent protection for a given product or service.

To accomplish this, a trademark application and a patent application are separately filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. If successful, as noted above, the resulting trademark registration will allow its owner to stop others from using a confusingly similar trademark, and the resulting patent will allow its owner to stop others from making, using, or selling the invention associated with the product or service. By having both a registered trademark and a granted patent, a business' products or services can be protected in two distinct ways.

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Article Tags: difference between patent and trademark, patent, trademark



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