Most people understand 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 use in interstate commerce, be registered there and have numerous presumptions since validity, ownership, and notice. However, the Supplemental Register has the benefit of value, especially once the alternative is away from the question at the beginning.
Before the great things about being supplementally registered is discussed, advised that you understand that that your supplemental registration doesn’t provide. Marks are often 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 mark pertains. Such placement does not pay 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 belonging to the validity of the registered mark or of the trademark registrant’s ownership of your mark. Finally, it is an admission that the mark is not inherently distinctive.
While these drawbacks obviously warrant a mark owner’s desire to be registered on the principal Register, a supplemental registration has benefits associated with 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 a good inherently distinctive mark (.e.g. Domino’s) that needs effort to create consumer recognition. Such marks are not going to warrant principal placement, though they be supplementally registered. After five years on the Supplemental Register, the mark may qualify for the primary Register due there having acquired distinctiveness. It is worth noting that both allow the owner to use the registered trademark symbol, sue in federal court, and advantages of certain international treaties.
Thus, any registration with the USPTO is better than having no trademark registration at everything. While ultimately the Principal Register provides the most benefits and online tm public search india best protection, the Supplemental Register should be considered where an entity prefers what usually a merely descriptive mark at the outset or did not acquire the requisite distinctiveness to be registered on where many deem as the preferred spot.