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There is much confusion surrounding Ms. Taylor Swift and what moves she’ll make next regarding her album re-releases. Do her trademark applications hold the key to determining which album will be released next?

We know that there are many aspects to consider when forming your startup company, and we encourage entrepreneurs to also invest in protecting their intellectual property. Obtaining IP protection may seem like a daunting, and expensive, task to take on in an already busy and cash-strapped time, but there are several ways to make IP protection more affordable than you may expect.

Trademarks, trade dress, and design patents each provide different types of legal protection and for different durations of time. In some cases, having multiple, or even all three, types of protection for a single design can be advantageous for the rights owner.

Trademarks, trade dress, and design patents are each exclusionary intellectual property rights that protect non-functional aspects of an owner's business operations and product lines by giving the owner legal rights to prevent others from using them. While each of these routes to protect an owner's intellectual property is somewhat similar and overlapping, differences exist. Each intellectual property right will be discussed here and then compared and contrasted with one other.

In an effort to address the issue of copycat products, Amazon established two options for IP rights owners to combat infringement of their IP: the Amazon Brand Registry and the Neutral Patent Evaluation Procedure. This article will focus on the Amazon Brand Registry, and a follow-up article will discuss the Neutral Patent Evaluation Procedure.

Always use your trademark as an adjective and never as a noun for the good or service. For example, a brand owner should use the trademark (adjective) followed by the good or service (noun) it modifies (e.g., “APPLE computer”). Using the mark as a noun indicates the mark is a good or service rather than the source of the good or service, which is a hallmark of trademark law.

You can register a trademark with a state government, the federal government, or both. Federally registered trademarks will usually have the ® symbol used next to or in close association with the good. Trademark rights begin with use in commerce.[i],[ii] Generally, "use" means the owner must use the mark in association with particular goods, such as placing the mark on the goods or their packaging, in advertisements for the goods, or at point-of-sale displays, for example.

Trademarks, trade dress, and design patents are each exclusionary intellectual property rights that protect non-functional aspects of an owner’s business operations and product lines by giving the owner legal rights to prevent others from using them. While each of these routes to protect an owner’s intellectual property is somewhat similar and overlapping, differences exist.  Each intellectual property right will be discussed below and then compared and contrasted with the other. This topic will be divided into several blog entries with part I introducing trademarks and providing a little history.

A trademark is a distinguishable word, symbol, slogan, or figure which identifies products or services from a specific source and distinguishes from products or services of other sources. Word marks in particular are evaluated on a sliding scale from most distinctive to least distinctive. More distinctive marks lend themselves to stronger trademarks, and are better candidates for registration on the Principal Register of the USPTO. The most distinctive marks are known as "inherently distinctive," as will be discussed here in greater detail.