Frequently Asked Questions

What are common law trademark rights?

Trademark rights arise out of "use of the mark in interstate commerce" and not just by registration. U.S. registration is not required to establish rights in a trademark. Common law rights arise from actual use of a mark. Furthermore, common law rights to a trademark are determined based upon the extent of the trademark's actual use.
Trademarkia provides users the opportunity to publish a legal notice of their existing common law rights on the Trademarkia.com website during the application workflow. By publishing on Trademarkia, you can place a large number of potential infringers on constructive notice that the mark is already being used in commerce and is not available.
Trademarkia.com is one of the largest law related websites on the Internet, receiving more than 1,500,000 page views per month, and approximately one new visitor every 5 seconds of the day from more than 150 countries around the world. In addition, marks published on Trademarkia are searchable on the world's largest search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
If you are currently using your trademark on a product or service, by publishing a legal notice of your trademark rights through Trademarkia, your trademark will be searchable and published on Trademarkia next to registered U.S. and foreign marks. That way, many more potential infringers will be on constructive and actual notice of your legal rights. In many countries, mere use of a trademark first creates legal protection for you. Trademarkia publishes this legal right to the public so that you can put them on notice of your rights.
If you are planning on using your trademark in the future, by publishing a legal notice of your intent to establish trademark rights through future use of your trademark, your trademark will be searchable and published on Trademarkia next to registered U.S. and foreign marks.
There are no government filing fees to publish a legal notice of your common law trademark rights on Trademarkia. Alternatively, by paying government fees and filing to register your trademark, you can potentially get damages against infringement in addition to stopping others.