Hi, this is Dan Smith of DPS Legal Counsel. Welcome to today’s podcast episode of Legal Scrubs.
Today. I want to talk about why physicians and medical practices should seriously consider applying for federal trademark registration for the name of their practice, and if they have a design logo for that logo and perhaps if they have some taglines that kind of give some indication about what their practice is about — if they have a motto or a tagline for their practice.
And so the reason that you want to do that, if you’re a physician or if you run a medical practice, is that having a federal trademark registration is going to give you protection against another competito using that same trademark and perhaps confusing or tending to confuse your patients or prospective patients as to the source of the services that they’re looking for.
So if you have a patient for your practice and you call it something and you have a competitor across town or in a neighboring state that’s close enough for the patient to get to,it’s going to cause, or at least have the potential for causing some confusion among your patients.
And so that’s one good reason to have a trademark registration for your name or your logo or your taglines. And it does protect you if you have a federal trademark registration, from an imposter or a competitor seeking to have a confusingly similar trademark to yours.
It’s also in these days where people tend to find goods and services online and through social media, having a federal trademark, registration’s going to make it that much easier for your patients and prospective patients to find you online through a Google search or some other type of online search or through some kind of social media posting that you might make.
It automatically gives you brand recognition for your trademarked brand.
And even if you are not quite ready to start using a particular trademark, you can always file what’s called an intent to use trademark application, basically letting the U.S Patent and Trademark Office know that this is a trademark that you intend to use.
Then once you use that trademark, you can show through a specimen filing that you have used it and your trademark can then proceed to be protectable.
There are many benefits to having to having a federal trademark registration if you’re a physician or you run a medical practice.
It gives notice to the world, including any potential imposters or competitors, that you are claiming the rights to a particular trademark.
It provides legal presumption of your ownership and validity of that trademark. It provides national trademark protection.
So if you don’t have a federally registered trademark, and you’re just relying on your common law rights to use a particular name that you’ve been using, you’re going to be limited in the geographic scope of the protection.
So in, in the case that you have someone who has a similar confusingly similar name, but they’re in another state, but they’re still perhaps drawing patients away from you, because of that, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it because you only have common law rights within your own geographic area.
And that’s another reason why state level trademarks are not as protective as federal trademarks because only federal trademark registration gives you national trademark protection.
And once you do get your trademark, your federally registered trademark, you can use the little R in a circle symbol for your trademark when you advertise it or market your practice, and that shows to the world how important and how significant you take the name of your practice or the logo of your practice.
Only owners of federally registered trademarks are allowed to use that little R in a circle.
In addition, at a point in time, when you decide to sell your practice, if you have a federal federally registered trademark, you have valuable intellectual property that can actually increase the value of your practice by the value of that trademark and perhaps produce a higher sales price.
All in all, it makes sense for doctors and medical practices to consider strongly applying for federal trademark protection.
That’s it for today.
Hope you enjoyed it.
We’ll see you next time on Legal Scrubs.