When to Trademark Your Brand: An Overview of Priority Timing and Cost

64 questions on when to trademark your brand, answered and cited by the UpLaw editorial team.

• Can a mark decay into genericness?
• Can you file ITU applications for fifty names you might use someday?
• Can you sit on an intent-to-use application indefinitely?
• Can you walk a company through the full timeline?
• Does a logo registration protect the underlying words?
• Does an ITU filing protect you from a senior user?
• Does the surname bar create a timing problem?
• Do you have to be using a mark before you can file?
• Has China's law changed on bad-faith filings?
• How can a February filing beat a competitor's summer of spending?
• How can a foreign squatter take your brand?
• How can an owner erode its own position?
• How does an ITU application differ procedurally from a use-based one?
• How does someone filing ahead of you box you in?
• How do Madrid and Paris priority work together?
• How do USPTO fees work?
• How hard do courts police the genuineness of use?
• How long does registration take?
• How lopsided is the timing risk-reward calculation?
• If you can afford only one filing, what should it be?
• Is "bona fide intention" a magic phrase?
• Is clearance a one-time event?
• Is trademark law a reward for coming up with a good name?
• Must foreign applicants use a U.S. attorney?
• What are a junior user's realistic options when a senior user surfaces?
• What are the three layers of a competent clearance search?
• What are the two hard limits on common-law rights?
• What consequence of the confusion test should a founder absorb?
• What does a forced rebrand actually cost?
• What does an ITU application convert?
• What does constructive use under Section 1057(c) do?
• What does growth require of a trademark portfolio?
• What does maturity require?
• What else does federal registration deliver?
• What happens at launch?
• What happens if you miss the six-month Paris window?
• What is a "circle of protection"?
• What is central attack under Madrid?
• What is the correct filing priority order on a budget?
• What is the cruelest feature of the rebrand risk?
• What is the Dawn Donut rule and is it still sound?
• What is the defensive bonus of a documented clearance search?
• What is the front-of-funnel discipline in three steps?
• What is the honest answer to when a founder should file?
• What is the honest bottom line on hiring counsel?
• What is the Madrid Protocol?
• What is the Paris Convention priority window for trademarks?
• What is the real question hiding behind a founder asking when to trademark a brand?
• What is the timing lesson when both layers are stacked?
• What is "use analogous to trademark use"?
• What killed the old "token use" shortcut?
• What made that sequence work?
• What sequence do founders run backwards?
• What should happen at Stage 0, the naming stage?
• What two facts about U.S. trademark law sit in tension?
• When is Madrid not enough?
• When is the optimal moment for most startups to file?
• Where does self-filing tend to go wrong?
• Where is self-filing reasonable?
• Why are descriptive names a trap for founders?
• Why does the distinctiveness spectrum belong in a timing article?
• Why is skipping the clearance search the most expensive mistake in the field?
• Why is the intent-to-use application the pre-launch company's most valuable move?
• Why not file in classes you might use someday?