Is paying thousands for a trademark worth the money?
Filing for a trademark can cost thousands in legal and government fees, take up to a year, and still carry a moderate risk of rejection. Business owners find it hard to justify this expensive process just to protect a cool name when they could easily pick a different one. This high cost and uncertainty leaves them stuck debating whether to hire a firm, apply themselves, or simply skip registration and use an unregistered "TM" symbol.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Picking a slightly less cool business name that doesn't face trademark risksDid this help you?
- 2Filing trademarks or LLCs independently via online state forms rather than paying a law firmDid this help you?
- 3Delaying trademark registration until the business name is actively used in commerceDid this help you?
- 4Leaving the symbol off physical products to avoid a cluttered look.Did this help you?
- 5Keeping the symbol on the main digital logo but omitting it from printed merchandise.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I'm a freelance Audiovisual Technician... I came up with a really cool, industry-specific business name... I paid like $1,500 for a patent law firm to do a thorough review... and they came back and said it was "Moderately Risky"... They recommended that I hire them to apply for it anyway... and pay them like $3,300 for the service and then pay the government like $700 for filing fees.”source ↗
“I don't actually NEED the business name (I could pick something slightly less cool), that's kind of a lot of money on something that may or may not add much value to my small business, and they said the process could take up to a year”source ↗
“Should I hire them to do it? Do it myself? Don't do it? I'm kind of inclined to not hire them for this.”source ↗
“I included the “TM” symbol on my logo. My logo will be printed on my products, should I remove the “TM” or not? Will people not suspect it’s fake just because it doesn’t have a “TM” on the product?”source ↗
“I might keep it but I’m thinking that I will be swapping it with “r” soon and people might get bothered by their product because theirs is “TM” and now it’s “R”. I really need people’s opinion whether to keep it remove it.”source ↗
Where this came up
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