You've got tabs open: USPTO.gov, an online filing service, maybe a trademark attorney's website too. Which path is the best for you and your business to protect your brand through trademark registration?

Two of them look almost identical from the outside — and they're probably not the two you'd guess.

In this episode, I break down the three real paths to trademarking your brand, and the one gap that trips up almost everyone in the murky middle.

• The real difference between DIY filing, an online filing service, and hiring an attorney — and what each one actually leaves you responsible for
• Why "attorney of record" matters more than most people realize, and how to find out if you actually have one
• A recent conversation with a business owner that shows exactly what can go wrong when nobody's clearly assigned to the work that comes after filing
• Why submitting the application is step one, not the finish line

If you're not sure which lane you're actually in, that's exactly what a Free Consultation is for.

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Explore Services offered by Trademarks with Chelsea (including flat fee schedule)

👉 Find the Full Show Notes Here

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I'm Chelsea Fournier, US trademark attorney for business

owners and thought leaders.

This is Trademarks with Chelsea, one real question answered every episode.

Today's question is, "Hire a lawyer or a filing service to

trademark my brand?" Question mark

Somewhere right now, a business owner has a couple tabs open on their browser.

One might be the uspto.gov, realizing they need to start protecting their

brand, logo, tagline, anything related to their business name, and they're

saying, "I think I could do this myself, and it's the USPTO that governs it,

so let me see how hard it could be."

The other tab is some online filing service.

Maybe Google recommended it, maybe AI recommended it, and they're

looking at, okay, so now there's the filing fees plus a service to have,

quote unquote, "someone" look at it.

And then maybe you also heard someone's name, like a trademark

attorney like myself, so maybe you have that website open too.

Now, if you've never gone down the road of trademarking, it can be really

hard to just sit there and decide which one is gonna be a right fit for you.

Are they really the same?

Are you really gonna get the same type of service from each?

Should you be chasing the cheaper option?

Here's what nobody really tells you.

Two of those tabs can feel almost identical from the outside, and they're

probably not the two that you think.

So the question we're answering today, we're gonna talk through what's the

difference between doing it yourself, paying the growing number of online

services and filing services that exist now to help you, or hiring

a lawyer to do it on your behalf.

What's actually different?

What does each one leave you responsible for?

And what are the biggest gaps that I see when business owners are

trying to figure out what bucket or what path is the best fit for them?

Now, as always, I'm gonna give you the honest answer, not just the answer

that's good for my business, because I want you to feel empowered, clear,

and take the step that you are going to be really confident implementing.

So if you're new here, yes, I am a trademark attorney in the United States.

Also, I am a business owner.

I have owned multiple businesses, been on startup teams, so I actually

get what it takes to create a brand that's worth protecting.

And I know that you, like myself, want your businesses to be here

for the long haul, and protecting your brand is a part of that

I've also been in a couple of seats that give very nuanced

and different perspectives.

When I practiced law in the state of Maine, I was actually affiliated with

the law firm that served as the attorney who would pick up the call when someone

booked a call with LegalZoom, specifically if they had booked a call about a

trademark filing that they had hired.

Now, this is neither an endorsement for or any negativity towards LegalZoom.

I just have that experience.

Being the one picking up the phone, I'm familiar with that role, and

I've also seen dozens and dozens of new services popping up.

Some involve real attorneys, and some are really AI filing

processes and online services

So let's talk through each of the three lanes here and the two that people

actually mix up and have the biggest likelihood of being confused about

what you're actually buying and getting

Lane one is pretty obvious.

You decide you are gonna fully DIY researching and figuring

out how to file an application through the uspto.gov website.

That stands for the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

You go in and you fill out the application, you submit it.

No professional touches, no legal expertise or reports or research.

You're the one making every judgment call, and you get it out the door

Now, I will put in a little statistic and a plug that when you are looking at

this DIY method, there is a statistic from a recent study done by UNC

School of Law that shows that 82% of attorney-filed trademark applications

receive preliminary USPTO approval.

That drops significantly down to only about 60% when it's actually DIY

or someone representing themselves without any attorney of record

helping them through the process.

So if you've done this several times and you've got some experience

and you're DIYing, your chances might be a little bit better.

But I do just like to point out that if you're spending the money doing the filing

fee regardless, that's the squishiness about DIYing, is that as you're filling

out that application, there's a lot of nuances and questions that you might not

know how to answer, or you might not know that you don't know how to answer it,

and that's really where that decreased percentage of success is gonna come in

Okay, so lane two, we're just gonna lump as this big option

of online filing services.

You pay a company to fill out and submit the form for you, and this is the one that

often trips people up because it feels like you're hiring a professional, and you

might be, but it's really gonna depend.

There's some website, there's a fee, there's a confirmation email.

You're paying the filing fee to the USPTO, and then some additional cost.

But what you're actually getting, you may not be fully aware

Because some of these services that I see now are relying completely on AI, and

there's actually not an attorney involved.

Some are going to have an attorney assigned to go through

the process of your application.

Maybe even you can pay a little extra to have a phone call with that attorney

like you can with the LegalZoom service

Now being the one who used to pick up those phone calls, I know that

you get like 15 minutes and the attorney does not have time outside

of that call to actually go through and do a more in-depth research.

But in a service like that, you are getting someone who's done

this before at least answering a targeted specific question

But here's the big caveat, especially in today's day and age

where there's so many options.

You gotta be really careful about what you are signing up for because what

you're getting depends entirely on which service it is, what you signed up

for, what they say they're going to do.

Are they gonna be attorney of record?

Will they be involved through any office actions or publication period,

or is it just filling out the form and sending it in on your behalf?

The one that I can speak obviously the most to is lane three, where

you're actually hiring an attorney.

A licensed attorney reviews your specific mark, is likely involved

in the search process, helping you understand those search results and

your likelihood of success, applying judgment to your specific situation,

helping you identify what class of goods and services that you're gonna be in,

crafting your description of goods or services to be closely matched to what

you're gonna be able to submit a really good quality statement of use with,

and then they will be on record as the attorney of record so that the USPTO

is communicating with that attorney.

And it means that they're responsible for that relationship with the USPTO,

not just signing the form, and so they're gonna be receiving notices and helping

you to understand the process and where your application is at any given moment.

And so the gap that most people don't see, it's not necessarily between lane one and

lane three, the DIY where you're saving the most money 'cause all you're paying

is the filing fee, and lane three where you are investing in legal expertise.

I think what's really muddied the waters is like those are pretty

clearly distinctive, but lane two, it can almost look or feel like

lane three from the outside without actually being in it, and you may not

understand some of the nuances of what is and is not included in that process

In the last couple weeks, I've been having free consultations booked and seeing a

trend, which is why this is the first topic and question we're answering on this

podcast Is I'm seeing people come onto the consultation and say, "Can you take a look

at where my application is in the process?

Because I hired some service to help me fill it out, so I know it's out there.

I got a confirmation, but I don't really know what happens next

And so these people, they didn't go the completely DIY route.

They didn't hire an attorney who's gonna be in charge of the process ongoing.

They're in this murky middle lane

And so they were booking a free consultation with me to say,

"Hey, what should I expect next?

Is there a next step?

Is there a process?

Is there another filing fee?

Is somebody else in charge of talking to the trademark office on my behalf,

or should I be looking for something?"

They were here because they were starting to realize in real life they didn't

actually know what they had paid someone to do and when that ended and when it

kinda kicked back to them, if at all

And if you've never gone through this process, why would you know on a sales

page for an online filing service to be like, "Okay, who's gonna be the attorney

of record? Who's gonna let me know when the publication period is starting? Who's

gonna help me vet and make sure that my statement of use is a good match?"

In most cases, it's just like, "Oh, great. They can file it for me or

help me to file it." And so there's this kind of assumption that you're

paying the filing fee to the trademark office, but this additional fee

for this kind of amorphous service.

So you're paying the flat fee to the USPTO regardless, but if you're using

one of these online filing services, then if you're unclear at all what

they're gonna handle, it makes it even more confusing to unwind afterwards

Because here's what you need to know as a business owner.

Filing the application is step one.

It is not the finish line, and we're gonna talk in the future about the different

steps that happen in the trademark office from the examining attorney and

the publication and statements of use.

We're also gonna talk about timelines because this can take anywhere

from 18 months to two years.

So there is a whole process after filing the application, proving that

you're using the mark, responding if the examiner has questions, renewing it even

years down the road after registration.

And if nobody's super clear on who's assigned to do that work or if you as

the business owner is not clear, then deadlines get missed, and then you have

paid those fees, and you don't end up with the registration that maybe you could have

Because while trademark deadlines do tend to be fairly generous to

give you a good window of time to execute it, once you miss it, you

can't usually un-ring that bell.

So if you are hiring a online service, maybe with a flat fee,

you've gotta be super clear on what they will be and will not be doing

after the application is filed

This is actually the exact reason I offer free consultations

at Trademarks with Chelsea.

Before you spend a dollar anywhere, with me, with anyone else, even the filing fee

if you're gonna DIY it, you deserve to know exactly what you're getting into and

who's going to be responsible for what, what to expect out of the whole process

But I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that everyone needs a lawyer for this.

That's not true If you are very experienced at this as a business

owner, and you have been managing your trademark portfolio to date successfully,

and you have a new logo or a new product name, and you feel confident

in the process, then I feel confident you could probably do it yourself

And the online filing services, this isn't a knock on every online service.

Some are more transparent than others about what you're actually getting,

but I just want you to understand that the burden is on you to ask and

understand in plain terms before you pay, are you my attorney of record?

What happens after this form is submitted?

Who's tracking my deadlines?

And if you can't get a straight answer to those three questions, that tells you that

you're paying for something that's not as valuable as you might have anticipated

And lane three, hiring an attorney like myself, is really where I believe

you should be if there's anything with real money behind it already.

Maybe you are buying inventory, creating packaging, retail placement,

hiring a website designer to create a website all wrapped around the brand

name, product name, logo, tagline

So this is teeing up that if there is a mistake, it could be potentially expensive

to unwind or rebrand or have to pivot

And maybe as the business owner, you wanna be in a position to actually have

a person, a real live person that can be accountable with you, help you to become

empowered and confident about the process, and even educate you so that you can be

bringing that into your business decisions

Because here's the thing, it's not about whether you're capable.

If you are a business owner with grit and you're already wearing a bunch

of different hats, I can guarantee you're probably capable of spending

hours and hours and hours and figuring this out on your own if you have to.

But it's really, this conversation is about knowing which lane you actually feel

best staying in, and then understanding how you're gonna have a role of what

you need to do versus someone else

Because at the end of the day, you are the one building this, and you ideally

are building this for the long haul.

Whether this is a service-based business, a product-based business, maybe you're

a thought leader, a speaker, the things that you're putting out into the

world, out into commerce matter to you.

It's not just a name, a logo, your tagline that you say from stage.

This is your body of work and potentially even your business legacy

So getting this right the first time and protecting what you have created is what

makes the rest of it possible for things to be sustainable and have longevity

Most business owners when they come to me for a free consultation are saying,

"I just want to feel confident that what I'm building is actually mine, that I

can own it, that I can rest assured that what I'm investing in around creating

assets, that I'm not gonna have to pivot down the road if I get a cease and desist

letter of someone saying they were using it before me and I didn't even know."

If you're sitting here listening to this and you're like, "Wow, she's brought

up some great thoughts, and now I'm not really sure which path I feel more

confident in," what I want you to do is to go to trademarkswithchelsea.com

and book a free consultation with me.

It takes two minutes to get on my calendar.

We will spend 30 minutes talking about what you're looking to protect, what

bucket feels best, or even if you started the process with an online service and

now you're not quite sure where things stand, we can look at that together.

You don't need to have it all figured out first, and you don't need to be,

quote-unquote, ready in some official way.

That confusion is exactly what this call is for, and I guarantee by the end of the

call, I can help you feel more confident in what next step you do wanna take

In the trademark world, there is a lot of nuance, and so the earlier you know where

you actually stand, whether you're just looking to start the process of searching

and exploring trademarks, whether you have an application that's pending and you need

to understand what's going on, Or if you own a registration and you really haven't

thought about the fact that there's gonna be future maintenance filings.

The fewer surprises you have in this process, the less expensive it becomes

So if you'd like to have a 30-minute chat, it is free.

The link is in the show notes.

I'd be happy to see your name pop into my calendar

Now, in the next episode, we're gonna be answering a question that

I've received a lot recently, which is, "Is my business name already

trademarked, and how would I even know?"

So if you're not yet subscribed and you're listening to this, make sure

to hit subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you can hear the next

question answered clearly and succinctly

That's it for today.

This is Chelsea encouraging you to take care of what you're building.

I'll talk to you next week