Most people comprehend of the numerous benefits of owning a trademark registration on the Principal Register belonging to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In fact, trademark owners are urged by trademark attorneys to select distinctive marks that you simply can to be able to, upon easily use in interstate commerce, be registered there and have numerous presumptions while validity, ownership, and notice. However, the Supplemental Register also provides value, especially when the alternative is out of the question when you’re getting started.
Before the primary advantages of being supplementally registered is discussed, when you understand that that your supplemental registration doesn’t provide. Marks occasionally relegated to the Supplemental Register because, at the request of the USPTO examining attorney, the marks are merely descriptive and therefore not a distinctive identifier of the source of the services or goods to which the objective pertains. Such placement does not give the exclusive right unit the mark in commerce in connection with its identified goods or services. Equally important, it does not serve as prima facie evidence from the validity of the registered mark or of the trademark registrant’s ownership of the mark. Finally, it may be an admission how the mark is not inherently distinctive.
While these drawbacks obviously warrant a mark owner’s wish to be registered on the primary Register, a supplemental registration has great things about its own. In fact, some entities choose to have a brand that tells consumers what it is they are offering (e.g. Pizza Restaurant) as opposed with regard to an inherently distinctive mark (.e.g. Domino’s) demands effort to create consumer recognition. Such marks are not going to warrant principal placement, though they be supplementally outlined. After five years on the Supplemental Register, the mark may qualify for the key Register due there having acquired distinctiveness. It is worth noting that both allow the owner to use the registered trademark search in India trademark symbol, sue in federal court, and leverage on certain international treaties.
Thus, any registration with the USPTO is better than having no trademark registration at any. While ultimately the Principal Register provides the most benefits and best protection, the Supplemental Register should be considered where an entity prefers what is probably a merely descriptive mark at the outset or didn’t acquire the requisite distinctiveness to be registered on where many deem as the preferred spot.