If you’re a new business owner, one of the things that’s bound to be on your mind, is finding a way to distinguish yourself, your business and your products and services from those of your competitors. You’re looking to make a name for yourself in your industry, and you want to create a successful long-term strategy—in other words, you’re thinking about branding. What branding does for a business is to make it identifiable to the general public, and detectable against the backdrop of competitors and industry players. Branding is most easily and safely done through trademark registration, wherein you set the way the world will see your business. Read on to find out more about trademark registration, and the best way to get the process rolling.

Are you reading this, all the while thinking that you don’t need trademark registration to run your business well, and your way? You need to know now, if you haven’t been advised to the effect already, that not undertaking a trademark registration process leaves your business exposed to a number of risks. Only you can take the necessary steps to protect your company and your brand, for the business world is ruthless, and so are some of your competitors. If you find a great trademark yet don’t start the trademark registration process, you could find your competitors using, or basically stealing your trademark, and getting away with it. If you don’t register your trademark, you don’t have any basis on which to take action against people using it without your consent. In the same vain, not registering your trademark can damage your reputation, if unethical businesses use it to discredit you in front of your customers.

Before you actually start the process to register your trademark, you have to decide on what you want it to be. You can choose words, images, or a bit of both, to create your own, unique identifier to the public, and to your competitors. You can use made-up words, or letter combinations to really make yourself stand-out, but make sure to keep it user-friendly and easy to pronounce. You can also use words that already exist, as long as they aren’t already registered. However, there are also a lot of rules regarding what you can’t use, and will need professional advice to avoid all of the no-nos. Some rules might be obvious, like the rule forbidding offensive wording or imagery, but some rules might be less intuitive—like the one that says you can’t use any last names in your trademarks.

Once you have a few ideas floating around in your mind, it’s time to do a trademark search. It will be much harder searching for trademarks which consist of an image, or of an image/word combination, but you can do an independent trademark search if you’re thinking about using only words. If what you wanted is taken, try changing it around a bit and doing another trademark search, but remember that your trademark can’t be too similar to another which is already in use in your industry. Don’t worry if your trademark search tells you what you want is already in use, but on a different market. You can use the same trademark as someone else, as long as you operate in a different industry.

It’s advisable to undertake a trademark search http://www.trademarkdirect.com on your own, to help you figure out if you can use your idea before you actually speak with an Intellectual Property attorney or to a trademark registration http://www.trademarkdirect.com company representative.