Should I register a trademark for my coffee shop name before opening it or should I wait until the business is successful?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “coffee shop names and logos“
Should I register a trademark for my coffee shop name before opening it or should I wait until the business is successful?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “coffee shop names and logos“
By all means make your brand valuable first so that someone can trademark it and sell it to you when you have lots of money to pay them.
Snark aside, do a web search to see if anyone in your business type is using the same name. The trademark is by business type. For example, Microsoft Excel is a piece of software, Hyundai Excel is a car, they are different business types. Your coffee shop could be “Excel” and not clash with their trademarks.
In the USA, go to United States Patent and Trademark Office and do a trademark search. Go to your state web site to see if anyone in your state is using the name. See if you can get the domain name.
Applying for a US trademark is pretty easy. Nolo Press has a product Online Trademark Application to walk you through the process.
As a small correction to your request, for a coffee shop you would get a service mark, not a trademark. Trademarks are for products and service marks are for services. If you sell a specific brand of beans with your label on them, you would get the trademark for that product to be sold in the store using your service mark.
It is always advisable to register your trademark as soon as possible to avoid others register it first, especially for those countries that adopt the “first-filing” policy, like China, Japan ect.
Honestly, no, you should not apply for a Trademark registration first. What you should do is search to make sure your mark is not being used already. You can perform general web searches using various search engines, but make sure you search both the USPTO Trademark database and the state trademark database where you’re opening your shop.
Once you determine that your mark is not being used by someone else (in the class of services you’re going to be doing business in), then you can register for it if you want. I recommend hiring a Trademark Attorney to assist you with this.
In general, you do not want to build goodwill in a trademark only to be limited on your rights and ability to defend it once it is valuable. A trademark search to ensure you are not using a previously existing mark is a necessary first step before committing to branding your shop, and then documenting any interstate sales for …