A quick Google search will reveal many do-it-yourself “trademark filing services” like LegalZoom, Trademarkia, and others that claim to have the “best trademark registration services” or “best trademark filing company.” As a law firm having actual trademark registration attorneys, we find these claims laughable because none of these trademark filing services provide any real service at all. Filing a trademark application through one of these companies is essentially the same as filing a trademark application yourself through the USPTO’s portal system. These do-it-yourself companies charge you a fee to copy and paste some information you enter in a form and then submit the application to the USPTO on your behalf.
What these companies don’t tell you is that they will be nowhere to be found after your application is filed. You’ll be on your own the minute after they take your money and submit your application. They will not see your application through to completion, up until registration, and it will therefore be you against the USPTO examining attorney in charge of examining your application. Most clients fail to recognize that most of the legal work is done during the time between filing and registration, not at filing. These “do-it-yourself” trademark companies are like criminal attorneys who show up to court on the first day of a two week trial only to introduce their clients to the judge and then leave their clients behind for the rest of the trial. Like in criminal court, the trademark registration process is adversarial in nature. So, if you’ve decided that you don’t want to navigate the trademark registration process by yourself, using one of these do-it-yourself companies will ultimately put you in a place you don’t want to be in.
While many business owners are lured into the trap that they can “do it themselves” and not have any significant consequences, this is not true. The United States is the most difficult country in the world to register a trademark, and the trademark registration process in the U.S. takes approximately 1 year and is fraught with pitfalls. The University of North Carolina completed a study several years ago that found trademark attorneys can increase the likelihood of success of a trademark application by over 50%. The reason for this is that a trademark application is a highly complex legal proceeding even though many online companies and articles make it sound easy. The data here is overwhelming and clear in that trademark attorneys give business owners a much higher probability of success in obtaining and securing trademark rights than if the attorney is not used.
If you dislike the idea of paying trademark fees to do-it-yourself companies such as LegalZoom, Trademark Engine, Trademarkia, and others for the “privilege” of doing all of the work yourself, then we encourage you to contact us instead. We will show you why choosing to work with responsive and detail-oriented US trademark attorneys who perform all work from start-to-finish in a prompt and efficient manner is truly the best option for aspiring trademark owners and business owners and will give you a significantly better chance of securing a trademark registration than if you file a trademark on your own or through one of these do-it-yourself companies.