so I'm curious. I want to file a trademark. 1) how hard is it? 2) how long will it take for the trademark to approve? 3) should I get a lawyer to do it? thanks.
1) What country? 2) You must be the first person to have used the mark for the classification. 3) You need to make sure a proper trademark search is done. 4) In the US, it takes about 1 year for review and publishing. There is a 5 year period after that during which the mark may be contested/cancelled. 5) You need to use an attorney unless you are absolutely sure of the procedure and do it correctly. One mistake can cause your application to be rejected and lose your application fee - not using an attorney is something a novice shouldn't even attempt to do.
It cost about $900.00 through legal zoom for my trademark and then I had to hire a separate attorney ($495) for respond to the trademark office action regarding a similar trademark. Do some research on the topic of what a trademark really is before you file. I was completely ignorant and - although it worked out (I will probably get my trademark) I could have done a much more thorough application and had a lot less of an issue. I would not trust legal zoom advice because that is why it wasn't filed right in the beginning. For the initial $900.00 they did research all the other existing marks (competitors?) but they failed to inform me of which one would be a problem - thus the need for the second attorney. In essence, you can mark something based on the use of it - in my case we wanted to do "engineering services" with our mark initially and ended up having to tweak this phrase to be more specific to "engineering of information systems for others" or something like that because someone had PART of the name that I wanted in their trademark and it involved engineering in a completely different industry (even though they were structural engineers and we are electronic) Hope this info helps.
LegalZoom and similar companies do not give legal advice. They say that all over their website but people seem to ignore the disclaimer or think that it is just there to cover their a$$. The trademark filing services help you fill out the forms and, in some cases, give you standard information to help you make a decision. Nothing more. If you need legal advice (and when filing a trademark, most people do need legal advice), go to an attorney who handles trademarks. In most cases, I think you'll find that the cost is not that much more than using a filing service, particularly if the attorney and his firm make good use of trained legal assistants to handle the more routine aspects. And you get real legal advice that will help you minimize any problems.
1) how hard is it? It isn't difficult, providing you hire a decent attorney that can set everything up for you. 2) how long will it take for the trademark to approve? Depends how many countries/territories you are applying for. One of our clients applied for pretty much worldwide coverage - still ongoing 3 years later! 3) should I get a lawyer to do it? Yes. As a side note, don't underestimate the total costs associated with trademark registration. Every country in which our client applied for registration came back with arguments that had to be settled by their attorney - there is a lot of back-and-forth, which costs A LOT. Their total bill is currently sitting around £20k (about $32k US!)