Effective and strong trademarks are crucial in developing a powerful brand for your goods and services. Many business owners expend substantial resources, financial and otherwise, to market and develop their brands only to learn some months later that they have no ownership interest in their trademark and that they cannot prevent competitors from using the same or similar branding.
Before you spend money, time, and energy, building a brand for your product or service, use Lantern Legal’s interactive trademark tool. Consistent with its mission, Natoli-Legal, LLC, is proud to offer the Brand Meter™ - its interactive trademark tool - to assist entrepreneurs and small businesses in selecting trademarks that will provide the strongest intellectual property protection and branding power.
Before you activate the Brand Meter™, and in order to maximize its value, here is the little you should know about trademarks: In order to qualify for trademark protection, your trademark must be “distinctive.” A distinctive trademark is one that is capable of identifying and distinguishing your goods or services from those of your competitors. A trademark may be inherently distinctive, for example, a trademark may consist of invented or coined words such as Kleenex, Kodak and Kotex, or it may become distinctive as a result of the consuming public’s recognition of the trademark, for example, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Every trademark will fall into one of five categories of descriptiveness, and the level of protection afforded to your trademark will depend on which of the five it falls under. From weakest to strongest, the following is a list of the five categories of descriptiveness:
- Generic Marks
- Descriptive Marks
- Suggestive Marks
- Arbitrary Marks
- Fanciful Marks