Registration of a trademark gives its owner the exclusive right to lawfully use it. This means that after you officially confirm your ownership of the trademark, no one except you will be able to use it for your own purposes. Upon registration, a potential trademark certificate is issued to the potential owner. It indicates to whom the right to use belongs and in relation to which goods the trademark is valid.
What does this document mean?
A trademark is a corporate image of a product (organization, individual entrepreneur) and is its distinctive element. It looks like a text or patterned element. Unfortunately, to protect yourself from scammers and competitors, it’s not enough just to use the trademark for promotional purposes. It is necessary to issue a certificate for him.
A trademark certificate is an official document that certifies the rights of an individual or organization to own a particular trademark. It limits the list of products on which the mark can be used, and also confirms the uniqueness of the brand.
The issued certificate will help the entrepreneur or company protect their products from counterfeiting and selling counterfeit products. Also, with the help of a trademark certificate, you can expand the company by transferring rights to other persons through a license agreement.
The official certificate includes the following items:
- individual number;
- registered trademark;
- information about the copyright holder of the trademark and address;
- date of receipt of the certificate and expiration date;
- request number;
- signature of the head of Rospatent.
Inside the document you can find information about the date of placement in the official bulletin of the Russian Federation. It also contains the address for correspondence with the copyright holder.
Preparation for paperwork
The procedure for issuing a trademark certificate is rather laborious. First of all, it is necessary to develop the logo itself, on which the document is issued. It is necessary to determine the designation and list of goods that will be marked with a trademark. These preparations are just the beginning of the whole procedure. When applying, it is necessary to conduct a patent search, file an application, undergo a series of examinations, and pay fees. The issuance procedure is long, so the designer will have to wait a year or more.
The process of preparing for registration is complicated by the fact that the task of the potential copyright holder is that the experts of Rospatent must be convinced of the uniqueness of the trademark and the need to issue a certificate.
Design steps
In order to legitimize their ownership of a trademark, the owner of the designation has to go through several stages. First you need to fill out an application and a description of the trademark, and then send an application to Rospatent.
Further design consists of the following actions:
- the application is being registered;
- the first examination is carried out (that is, the availability of all documents and the correctness of their preparation are checked);
- if the formal examination did not reveal violations, then the next check is carried out, where they examine the certified object for uniqueness and other criteria;
- upon approval by experts, a decision is made on the registration of a trademark;
- data on it are entered in the state register.
After passing all the above steps, the applicant is issued a certificate for a trademark.From this moment, the owner of the certificate becomes the official copyright holder of the trademark.
Refusal cases
Do not count on the fact that the application is a guarantee of the issuance of a certificate. Experts may refuse if the trademark does not meet certain requirements. For example, it includes incorrect geographical names, is similar to other logos or is difficult to distinguish.
First of all, try to avoid failure, and if this happens, then you have several options. You can additionally work with the trademark and, if possible, change something to meet all the requirements, or ask the owner of a similar sign for written permission to use the similarity.
If you are denied, the decision can be challenged at the Patent Disputes Office. This procedure has one significant minus: it is long and expensive. Challenging an expert’s decision will cost, on average, a lawsuit. Therefore, for help in this case, it is better to contact a qualified specialist.
Territory of legal protection
From the moment you receive a certificate, a legal protection regime applies to a trademark. It is worth noting that this regime applies only to the territory of the Russian Federation, and the certificate itself is issued per country. If the owner of a company or organization plans to use a trademark abroad, then protection will not apply to it, and an entrepreneur should contact a foreign agency for a similar certificate.
Validity of trademark certificate
It is not possible to obtain a certificate that does not need to be renewed and re-registered. The validity of a trademark certificate is ten years. This means that the rights of the trademark owner are secured by a document for ten years from the date of filing the application for registration. At the end of the certificate, you can apply for a new certificate. The number of such applications is not limited by law. Thus, the term of a trademark certificate can be called unlimited.