How to select a great trademark for my brand? This is one of the most important questions that trademark search service providers come across some point of time in their professional career. We too were bombarded with this question many times and mostly by start-up companies that are bootstrapping and struggling to create a niche for them in their respective domain. Thus, we decided to create a write-up that can answer this question, if not completely, partially and can give some idea about picking a great trademark for their offerings.
In fact, the best answer to this question would be that “it depends on what you want out of your trademark”. If you want a high degree of protection then the best way to go about this is by picking a coined term or a term that is created artificially. But if you are open to taking risks on your mark then picking a descriptive mark would be the best way to go about.
In case you intend to coin your own term, then be aware, that such trademarks do not tell the consumers what you do or what goods or services you provide. Simply put, in such a case consumers will not be able to recognize your products/services instantly. Since the term is artificially created it wouldn’t give any clue to the consumer about what you do or what you provide and thus you will have to spend more resources on branding and promotion.
For example, trademarks like GOOGLE, PHILIPS, YAHOO, XEROX and EBAY all are artificially created terms and have no valid meaning in the dictionary. If the name of GOOGLE were “ONLINE SEARCH ENGINE” the consumers could have recognized services offered by it instantly. It would have definitely given some clues instantly about the services offered by it and thus promotional costs of that trademark might have been reduced significantly. However, the degree of protection would have been diluted and thus they had to bear the burden of associated risks.
As we said earlier it depends on what the intention of the applicant is. If you want an absolute and a greater degree of protection, picking a coined term is the best way. But if you want to give some instant clue to the consumers about your offerings then picking a descriptive term will be the best. Both have advantages and detriments and should be weighed by the applicant before applying for a trademark.
Viewing the fact that start-ups are tight budget companies, a professional trademark search company, can help them identify and pick a name that is worthy. Since they are professionals and are doing it day in and day out they could find marks that are worth investing.