ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 26, 2005 BY KURT P. LEYENDECKER
Finally, the second to the last installment in the series!
And really this is perhaps the most important point of your Intellectual Property. What is the point of controlling it and protecting it if you do not intend to leverage it? Unfortunately, successfully leveraging your IP can be the most difficult of the three. After all, the whole point of IP is to give you or a company to which you have licensed your IP, a competitive advantage over the competition.
First trademarks: They are perhaps the easiest IP to leverage. Just use your marks in commerce to identify the goods and services offered by you or your company. As your products and services become recognizable based on your marks, the value of the marks will increase. While trademarks have the lowest initial intrinsic value among all types of IP, they have potentially the highest value over time. For instance, “Coca Cola” is worth trillions of dollars as a trademark and is often licensed to other companies to generate additional revenue for the company.
For most individuals and small companies, the goal is to make the trademarks identifying your products or services synonymous with quality and value within your market segments. Further, the hope is that eventually your marks will immediately come to mind when someone familiar with the market segments in which you operate thinks about the products or services you provide.
Some pointers to leveraging your marks: (i) always prominently mark your products; (ii) always refer to your product and services by their trademarked names in advertising and other company literature and marketing materials; (iii) always mark your registered marks with an encircled “R” symbol to let others know you have registered the mark federally; (iv) always mark your unregistered marks with a “TM” to let others know you consider the marks your property; (v) avoid using your marks as generic descriptors for your products and services; and (vi) be diligent about enforcing your marks letting those that are using marks that may be confusingly similar with yours that they should cease and desist.
If your mark(s) becomes especially well recognized, you may have other companies approach you about licensing the mark(s) for their products. This is great but you must maintain control of the manner in which the mark(s) are used by others. Typically, trademark licensing agreements will include clauses that give the Licensor the right to ensure that certain quality standards are met concerning any product or service using the licensed mark(s). Failure of the Licensor to maintain and control quality standards can lead to loss of the trademark(s).
