Three Tiers of Trademark Protection: Common Law Rights Supplemental and Principal Registers

61 questions on three tiers of trademark protection, answered and cited by the UpLaw editorial team.

• Are trademark rights something you acquire once and keep?
• Can a color be a trademark?
• Can an unregistered trademark owner use the ® symbol?
• Can a senior common-law user stop a junior user in a remote market?
• Can a Supplemental registrant sue under Section 32 of the Lanham Act?
• Can the same product feature be both non-distinctive and functional?
• Can you file an intent-to-use application on the Supplemental Register?
• Can you sue for trademark infringement without a registration?
• Do common-law rights survive after you obtain a federal registration?
• Does a federal registration ever eliminate the need to prove anything?
• Does a Supplemental registration give nationwide trademark priority?
• Do you have to use the ® symbol to recover damages for infringement?
• How does a mark move from the Supplemental Register to the Principal Register?
• How does the register you are on affect who bears the burden of proving secondary meaning?
• How does the three-tier framework apply to trade dress?
• How does trademark abandonment work?
• How do most applicants end up on the Supplemental Register?
• How far do common-law trademark rights reach geographically?
• How should a company protect the shape of its product?
• Is an incontestable trademark registration bulletproof?
• Is a Supplemental registration easy to attack?
• Is "registered or not registered" the right way to think about trademark protection?
• Is registering on the Supplemental Register an admission that your mark is not distinctive?
• Is there such a thing as "common-law trademark registration"?
• Should a descriptive mark go on the Supplemental Register or rely on common-law rights?
• What are common-law trademark rights?
• What are the disadvantages of relying on common-law trademark rights?
• What are the eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Register?
• What are the Section 7(b) presumptions?
• What are the three tiers of U.S. trademark protection?
• What benefits does a Supplemental Register registration provide?
• What does the ideal Principal Register path look like for a new brand?
• What does the Supplemental Register not provide?
• What evidence proves secondary meaning?
• What happens to a trademark owner who misses a maintenance deadline?
• What is a descriptive trademark and where can it be protected?
• What is analogous use in trademark priority?
• What is constructive notice under Section 22 of the Lanham Act?
• What is constructive use under Section 7(c)?
• What is customs recordation and which register allows it?
• What is distinctiveness and why does it determine which tier a mark can occupy?
• What is genericide and can it kill an incontestable registration?
• What is naked licensing and why is it dangerous?
• What is secondary meaning in trademark law?
• What is the Abercrombie distinctiveness spectrum?
• What is the functionality bar in trade dress law?
• What is the Principal Register?
• What is the right trademark strategy for an inherently distinctive mark?
• What is the Section 2(f) five-year presumption?
• What is the single best piece of trademark advice for a new business?
• What is the Supplemental Register?
• What is trademark incontestability?
• What maintenance filings keep a federal trademark registration alive?
• What should a buyer check when a target company's trademark is the main asset?
• Which trademarks are inherently distinctive?
• Who has priority in a trademark dispute — the first user or the first filer?
• Why can generic terms never be trademarks?
• Why can product design trade dress never be inherently distinctive?
• Why does the three-tier system exist at all?
• Why do foreign companies often misunderstand U.S. trademark rights?
• Why is the Supplemental Register's blocking function valuable?