Applying for a Federal Trademark

This notice, including use of the symbol, may be a sufficient deterrent to avoid a third party from adopting a confusingly similar mark. Most importantly, a federal trademark registration affords the owner the right to sue in federal court and seek treble damages, attorneys fees, and/or $100,000 statutory damages for trademark infringement and/or for violations of the Anti-cyber squatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). While both federal trademark registrations and state trademark registrations are valuable intellectual property assets, a federal trademark registration provides additional benefits to the owner of the mark.

If able to meet the requirements, a trademark owner should consider applying for a federal trademark registration rather than state trademark registration. Both federal and state trademark registrations require that the mark be a distinctive source identifier. The distinctiveness continuum, so to speak, applies to both trademark registrations in that marks that are arbitrary/fanciful, suggestive, or that have acquired distinctiveness are worthy of trademark protection. Merely descriptive and generic marks are not. However, the requirement of distinctiveness is where the similarities between federal and state trademark registrations essentially end.

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