Protecting trademarks. The most basic thing you can do to protect your trademark is to register it. I do recommend federal registration as a way of letting people know that you take your trademark rights seriously. It can be more effective to, when you’re enforcing your trademark rights, to send a copy of that certificate of registration rather than just to rely on common law rights and a cease and desist letter if you do find an infringement.

So the first thing I would do is register the mark in the U.S., and then if you’re gonna use the mark or sell your goods overseas, I would register the mark internationally as well. The second thing I would do is consider a watch service. These are services where a third party will watch the U.S. PTO register or international registers and see when people file similar marks with similar goods and services, so that’s a way of being alerted to the potential infringers. The third thing you need to do is, when you encounter infringement, you do need to take action. It’s important to police your marks, to maintain your trademark rights, and so when you do find out about infringement, it’s important to investigate it and potentially take action.