Most people understand of the numerous benefits of owning a trademark registration within Principal Register belonging to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In fact, trademark owners are urged by trademark attorneys to select distinctive marks that you simply can to be able to, upon handy in interstate commerce, be registered there and revel in numerous presumptions because validity, ownership, and notice. However, the Supplemental Register also provides value, especially once the alternative is away from the question when you’re getting started.

Before the advantages of being supplementally registered is discussed, it is important to understand that that your supplemental registration does not provide. Marks frequently relegated to the Supplemental Register because, at the request of the USPTO examining attorney, the marks are merely descriptive and therefore not a distinctive identifier of the source of the goods or services to which the objective pertains. Such placement does not pay the exclusive right to use the mark in commerce in experience with its identified services or goods. Equally important, it does not serve as prima facie evidence of this validity of the registered mark or of the Trademark Consultant in India registrant’s ownership of your mark. Finally, it’s an admission that the mark is not inherently distinctive.

While these drawbacks obviously warrant a mark owner’s wish to be registered on the primary Register, a supplemental registration has benefits associated with its own. In fact, some entities choose to possess a brand that tells consumers what this is they are offering (e.g. Pizza Restaurant) as opposed a good inherently distinctive mark (.e.g. Domino’s) that needs effort to create consumer recognition. Such marks are not going to warrant principal placement, though they be supplementally registered. After five years on the Supplemental Register, the mark may qualify for the principal Register due going without having acquired distinctiveness. It is worth noting that both allow the owner to use the registered trademark symbol, sue in federal court, and leverage on certain international agreements.

Thus, any registration with the USPTO is better than having no trademark registration at all. While ultimately the Principal Register provides the best results and best protection, the Supplemental Register should be considered where an entity prefers what usually a merely descriptive mark at the outset or did not acquire the requisite distinctiveness to be registered on where lots of deem as the preferred spot.