contracts – protecting rights, minimizing risk, and negotiating fair terms in the U.S. and globally.
Your brand is your promise. Make sure it is yours to keep.
As a trademark lawyer in Miami and New York, ChaseLawyers® helps artists, entrepreneurs, entertainment companies, and growing brands choose names they can own, clear them before launch, and register them with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). From a stage name or record label logo to a clothing line, app, or restaurant concept, we build a trademark strategy around where your business is going – not just where it is today.
Rebranding after a conflict can cost you followers, inventory, and momentum. A careful clearance search, a well-drafted application, and a plan for monitoring and enforcement can help you avoid that. Our attorneys explain each step in plain English, so you can make confident decisions about your brand.
contracts — protecting artists, producers, and their rights across the U.S. and globally.
What Do We Offer You?
Trademark Clearance, Registration & Enforcement Services
Trademark Clearance – Launch Without Hidden Conflicts
Your brand deserves a clear start. Before you invest in packaging, merch, or marketing, we help you:
- Run knockout and comprehensive trademark clearance searches.
- Review federal, state, common-law, and international uses of similar marks.
- Assess how distinctive your mark is and the risk of a likelihood-of-confusion refusal.
- Choose the strongest option – or adjust a name before it becomes expensive to change.
USPTO Trademark Registration – Turn Your Brand Into an Asset
A federal registration can strengthen your rights nationwide. Our trademark registration attorneys help you:
- Select the right classes and write precise descriptions of goods and services.
- File use-based or intent-to-use applications for names, logos, and slogans.
- Respond to USPTO office actions, including descriptiveness and confusion refusals.
- File statements of use, maintenance declarations, and renewals on time.
Trademark Enforcement – Defend Your Brand
When someone trades on your reputation, we act quickly and strategically. We can help you:
- Watch for confusingly similar filings and marketplace uses.
- Send cease-and-desist letters and platform infringement reports.
- Handle oppositions and cancellations before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.
- Negotiate coexistence, licensing, or settlement agreements, or pursue litigation when needed.
How It Works
How We Work – Building Your Trademark Strategy Step by Step
- Tell us about your brand, your products or services, and your growth plans.
- Share the names, logos, and any conflicts you already know about.
- Hear back from our team within 24 hours.
- Map which marks to protect first and in which classes.
- Run clearance searches and walk through the results with you.
- Set priorities for U.S. federal, state, and international filings.
- Prepare and file your trademark application.
- Track deadlines and respond to office actions.
- Guide you through publication and the opposition period.
- Address infringers, counterfeiters, and cybersquatters.
- Record registrations with U.S. Customs and Border Protection where helpful.
- Draft licensing, merchandising, and brand collaboration agreements.
- Monitor new filings that could conflict with your mark.
- Calendar maintenance filings and renewals.
- Extend protection to new products, sub-brands, and countries.
Artists, Bands & Creators
Your stage name, band name, or channel name is how fans find you. We help you clear it, register it for music, merch, and entertainment services, and respond to confusing copycats.
Entrepreneurs & Startups
We help founders select protectable names and file early – often through intent-to-use applications – so you can reserve your brand while your product is still in development.
Established Companies & Consumer Brands
From fashion and hospitality to technology, we help businesses manage, enforce, and expand trademark portfolios across the U.S. and abroad.
Media & Entertainment Businesses
Record labels, production companies, agencies, and digital platforms work with us to protect logos, imprint and series names, and brand licensing programs.
Our Reviews
FAQ
Trademark FAQs – Clearance, Registration & Protection
Practical answers to the questions founders, artists, and brand owners ask before and after they file. Every brand is different, so book a free consultation for advice on yours.
U.S.-based applicants can file on their own, but foreign-domiciled applicants generally must use a U.S.-licensed attorney. Even for U.S. filers, mistakes in clearance, the description of goods and services, or the specimen of use can lead to refusals that are difficult or impossible to fix later. A trademark lawyer can help you avoid those errors and respond if the USPTO raises objections.
A USPTO database search is a starting point, but it will not catch everything. A full clearance search also reviews state registrations, unregistered common-law uses online, domain names, and similar-sounding or similar-looking marks for related goods. An attorney then weighs the likelihood of confusion, because an identical match is not required for a conflict.
It varies. Timing depends on the USPTO’s current workload, whether an office action is issued, and whether anyone opposes the mark after publication. Intent-to-use applications also require proof of use before the registration issues. Straightforward applications commonly take many months, and contested ones take longer. We track your deadlines and keep you updated at every stage.
Often, yes – if the name is distinctive and used, or intended to be used, to identify goods or services such as recorded music, live performances, merchandise, or entertainment services. Names that are merely descriptive or primarily a surname can face refusal, and a mark identifying a living person requires that person’s written consent. A clearance search comes first.
You can use ™ for goods and ℠ for services to claim rights in a mark, whether or not it is registered. The ® symbol may be used only after your mark is registered with the USPTO, and only for the goods and services the registration covers. A state registration does not permit ®, and misusing the symbol can hurt you in a later dispute.
An office action is a letter from the USPTO examining attorney explaining why your application cannot be approved yet. It may raise procedural issues, such as an unclear description of goods, or substantive refusals, such as likelihood of confusion or descriptiveness. You must respond by the stated deadline, or the application may be abandoned. We prepare evidence-backed arguments and amendments.
Trademark rights are territorial, so a U.S. registration does not protect your brand abroad. You can file directly in each country or region, such as the European Union, or use the Madrid Protocol to extend a U.S. application or registration to many member countries through a single international filing. The right approach depends on your target markets and timeline.
It depends on who used the mark first, where, for which goods or services, and whether either mark is registered. In the U.S., unregistered use can still create common-law rights in the area where the mark is used. We analyze priority and likelihood of confusion, then advise whether to proceed, negotiate a coexistence agreement, challenge the other mark, or rebrand.
A federal registration can last indefinitely if you keep using the mark and file maintenance documents on time. You must file a declaration of use between the fifth and sixth years after registration, then a combined declaration and renewal between the ninth and tenth years and every ten years after that. Missing these deadlines, including any grace period, cancels the registration.
Options may include a cease-and-desist letter, marketplace and social media takedown reports, a UDRP complaint for an infringing domain name, or a federal lawsuit. Remedies in court can include an injunction, the infringer’s profits, damages, and, in exceptional cases, attorney’s fees. Owners of federal registrations may also record them with U.S. Customs to help stop counterfeit imports.
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