how to trademark a logo

How to Trademark your Logo in 2023 and why is it Important?


Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on April 7th, 2024 12:00 pm

We all know a business can only succeed with a definite brand logo. A business logo is a trademark sign of that particular company that makes your business unique and differentiates your products and services from other brands in the same industry.

Your logo should be unique and represent your brand identity because your customers recognize it as your company’s identity. That means it is as important as the name of your company. Hence, as you set up your business, start working on trademarking your logo immediately.

A trademark is any name, design, or symbol that identifies the product and services of any organization or company. It’s a legal right of any organization that allows them to use a unique identifier for their business. So, if you design an attractive and unique logo, it will help your brand to stand out. An appealing and appropriate logo makes it easy for customers to remember and recognize your brand.

Trademarking your brand logo is an impersonal straightforward process that should be followed by every organization in order to make a name of your brand in the market. However, there are a few legal steps that should be taken into consideration before applying for it. You can only get your logo trademarked once it is properly registered. Also, the logo won’t be granted a trademark until it’s valid and can compete with its competitors in the market.

Is designing a logo for your company too laborious and needs in-depth research? Then Appy Pie Design provides a free online Logo Maker without investing precious time and a whopping amount of money. But, before that, we recommend you go through the insight into some crucial aspects associated with logo designing described below to understand which suits you best.

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Why is it needed to Trademark a Logo: A complete Guide

To understand the what and ifs of logo trademarking, you need to distinguish between two types of trademarks. First is a State trademark that protects the logo within the state boundaries and it could be beneficiary only if you’re doing business in a certain territory. The second is a Federal trademark that protects your logo all over the US. Federal protection is recommended in this blog if you’re scaling your business both online and offline.

Copyright vs. Trademark: What's the Difference?

Difference between copyright and trademark

Would you not want your business to become a notable brand? Or create some original assets and products in your business? If yes, you will likely have to consider the measures that protect your intellectual properties; hence, you should clearly understand the difference between Trademark and copyright.

  • Both Trademark and Copyright are the significant intellectual property of a company. The Trademark helps differentiate a product from another with the help of symbols, design, words, and phrases. On the other hand, copyrights protect that product's original work or authorship.
  • The purpose of incorporating the Trademark is to maintain the exclusivity of the product and services in the industry. In contrast, the Copyright helps to grant the right to distribute and use that product and service.
  • Trademark intercepts a company's competitors from utilizing similar text in their branding, ultimately ensuring customer trust. On the other hand, Copyright prevents any individual except the creator from selling and distributing copyrighted products and services offline and online.
  • The validity duration of both Copyright and Trademark differs within a specific period. For example, trademark registration is generally valid for ten years, whereas copyright registration is valid for a lifetime.
  • The trademark logo of a particular product and service is authorized to use the ® sign. On the flip side, the symbol © protects the copyright granted to original products.

Listed below are some of the benefits that you get from registering a federal trademark

  • Once your logo gets registered with USPTO, you become the official owner of the Trademark and can obtain exclusive rights to use it. Moreover, other companies can only use your logo with your consent.
  • You can protect your Trademark from violation and get compensated if such an incident occurs.
  • You can easily extend your business to the global world and get the Trademark of each country.

Pro Tips: If your Trademark has been infringed, tackle the situation by commissioning a professional attorney who'll send a legal notice on your behalf to stop the violation. The lawyer can take legal action against it if that doesn't work.

Simple steps to Trademark a Logo: Get your logo ready

  1. Submit your application to the USPTO website: The goods and services are categorized in the USPTO database, and you can pick one or more that your product and service fall into. Next, explain the logo usage, and ensure your presentation should display the commercial benefits of the logo design. Now, pay the application fee.

  2. Wait for the appeal or decision: Your trademark application will be reviewed within 6 to 9 months, or the complex process can take up to years.

  3. Rejection Causes:
    • A logo isn’t unique or is confusing with other trademarks
    • The logo contains some insulting graphics or words
    • Logo misleads the customers

Steps to create your own Logo with Appy Pie's Logo Maker:

Creating a Logo with Appy pie Design

Business companies need more time and resources to design their brand logo. Sometimes the logo design process is hard to define because excessive time and creativity are required to create and execute a perfect logo. But do not worry about that because Appy Pie Design can access easy-to-use logo-making software. You do not need to become a tech-savvy or technological expert in using this software.

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To frame a magnificent logo for your company, you need to go to the design section of this software and click on "logo maker" under that. After that, you can freely access the essential logo design factors. Then, you can design your logo by following simple steps in the Appy Pie Design platform defined below.

  1. Choose a Logo Template

    Initiate the logo designing process by selecting an endless option of pre-build free templates that our professional graphic designer crafts.

  2. Customize your Logo Design

    You get "easy to edit" inbuilt templates to change your logo anytime and anywhere. Alter the image color, icons, or favicon using multiple features and lay out the structures. Pick an attractive font in the software because it offers stylish fonts that suit your brand. Moreover, you can customize the clipart, gradient, fill, and shadow effect to modify the logo, ensuring an exotic look.

  3. Save and Publish

    Now is the final step to save and preview your customized Logo Design and download it for further use. You can also download it as an image file or export it to another format like .png, .jpg, or .gif.

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Last but not least, Appy Pie Design also promotes establishing robust customer relations. Thus, it provides a customer support team to identify customer issues. As a result, customers can quickly contact us with the given contact details and directly connect with our professional logo designers if they are stuck sketching their logo on this platform.

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Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie