Trademarks and Branding

Your unique and identifiable trade names, trademarks and service marks are what set your business apart from your competition. Therefore, it is imperative that your brand identity be as strong as possible to ensure a healthy and lasting relationship with your customer base. However, developing and maintaining a strong brand identity can be a tricky business. It requires strategic thought and planning around the development of your trade names and marks. It requires not just obtaining trademark or service mark registrations, but obtaining the right registrations and enforcing the rights attendant to those registrations. It requires certain processes in how marketing and promotional materials are developed and presented. It requires education of your employees about brand selection, reporting and retention to ensure a long shelf-life for your brands.

Altera’s branding team offers not only the legal training and experience to assist your business in these vital activities, but also the unique backgrounds of its practitioners in the areas of marketing, advertising and brand development. Any intellectual property attorney should be able to help you obtain a federal registration for your trade names and marks, but Altera offers a team of attorneys with real-world marketing and advertising experience who are available to partner with your marketing departments in selecting and developing strong brands – those that your consumers will best identify with and those that are optimal for enforcement.

Indeed, Altera offers branding seminars to the management and marketing departments of our clients to assist in the selection of strong brands. This true partnership approach offered by Altera is vital in protecting perhaps the strongest asset of your company.

And, once you have determined your brand, we bring our expertise to make sure that you have the legal rights to the critical elements of your branding strategy. Is your identity properly protected? Are you securing rights that will be meaningful to your company’s future? Are you protected on the Internet? Does your enforcement strategy fit your strategic objectives?

At Altera, we work with you to make sure that you have a legally secure position that fits with your overall branding objectives. It’s not just sensible legal advice, it’s good for your business.

Domestic Trademark Filings

While it is possible to create a mark and obtain rights by simply using a mark in certain types of commerce, there are very important additional rights that can be gained by obtaining a formal registration for your trademark or service mark. Whether you use a mark only locally, thereby becoming eligible for a state registration, or in interstate commerce, thereby becoming eligible for a U.S. federal registration, Altera has the experience and know-how to assist you in preparing and filing applications for these types of registrations.

With the advent of electronic filing at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, however, preparing and filing trademark applications is changing. While more companies are filing trademark applications and the number of filings is increasing, it becomes ever more important to know the process and the pitfalls in prosecuting a trademark application.

This is where Altera’s team of trademark attorneys and paralegals can really help you save money in the long run. Altera takes the time to get to know and understand your business and business objectives, how and why you chose certain marks, how you want to use those marks and what you expect to gain from an investment in a state or federal trademark registration. This team approach in trademark prosecution is key to streamline the review process at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and cut down on the expenses that can be involved in obtaining a federal registration.

Moreover, Altera understands that the reason for obtaining a registration is just as, if not more important, than the actual registration itself. This is why Altera attorneys do not just blindly file trademark applications on command, but truly work with clients to develop a cost-benefit analysis for creating a trademark portfolio and a value added assessment in prosecuting and maintaining those registrations.

International Trademark Filings

Altera Law Group’s attorneys have decades of experience in handling domestic clients' trademark affairs in foreign countries where products or services are deployed or foreign offices or subsidiaries are based. As the Internet becomes an ever-increasing platform for product promotion, securing and enforcing international trademark rights becomes a more critical task.

Altera will counsel your business on the comparative trademark laws and practices of foreign countries, the requirements for protecting and enforcing trademark rights in those regions of the world, and the various options for obtaining trademark registrations, from Community Trademark Applications to filings under the Madrid Protocol.