The owners of many companies spend money and time on creating and promoting their trademark, but its registration is either postponed indefinitely or ignored altogether. This can lead to loss of income and reputation of the business, since competing companies, using the trademark of a well-promoted company, can lure away customers, depriving the company of profits, and discredit it with the low quality of services or goods.
There is also a danger that a competing company may register a trademark of a successful company and subsequently hold it accountable for using its own trademark.
Therefore, registering a trademark is a reliable way to protect a business.
The main stages of trademark registration, which are important to consider when working with documents independently, include:
- the preparatory stage, during which it is necessary to find out whether the trademark meets the requirements of Article 1483 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. For example, when creating a trademark, you cannot use state names, images of cultural values of Russia, or designations that were used when registering other means of individualization;
- at the next stage, you need to carefully study the groups of goods according to the International Classification of Goods and Services (ICGS) in order to avoid mistakes when choosing one or more classes that include the goods that you plan to produce under your trademark.
- at the third stage, an independent verification of the designation is carried out using the available available databases. However, independent verification of the designation may not always be effective. On the contrary, patent attorneys give a 100% guarantee, since they have access to Rospatent databases.
- at the fourth stage, before submitting the application, it is necessary to pay the state fee;
- then an application for registration of a trademark is completed in the form approved by Rospatent, in which it is necessary to indicate:
· details of the applicant (full name of the commercial organization or full name of the citizen registered as individual entrepreneur, OGRN, INN and other identifiers);
· the applicant’s postal address for correspondence with Rospatent, e-mail, telephone and/or fax;
· details of the applicant’s representative, who can be a patent attorney or any other specialist or employee of the company. If the application is submitted by a representative of the applicant who does not have the status of a patent attorney, then a notarized power of attorney from the applicant is required;
· a designation acting as a potential trademark and its description, which can be given directly in the application or attached on a separate tangible medium.
· classes of goods and services according to ICGS;
· a copy of the payment order for payment of the state fee can be attached to the application;
- at the stage of formal examination, FIPS employees check the correctness of the package of documents;
- after successful completion of the formal examination, the substantive examination begins, the duration of which reaches 8-18 months. At this stage, Rospatent checks for the absence of absolute grounds for refusal of registration, searches for identical and confusingly similar trademarks with previously registered trademarks and may correspond with the applicant regarding the provision of additional documents;
- at the final stage, after receiving a positive decision from the experts, the applicant receives a certificate of registration of the trademark and becomes its Copyright Holder.
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