Registering a trademark

[GomiGirl]

Anybody done this? What is the process, costs, time needed etc?

I want to register a brand name that we have used for a number of years but never registered before. I have looked around but don't think that anybody else has registered it anywhere.

I am wanting an international trademark - seems better to do it all in one go rather than country by country.

Advice?

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Go through the Japan Patent Office.
More specifically, the process is outlined here.

[sublight]

Weird, my boss was just grilling me about trademark registration about an hour ago. You're not a foul-mouthed Colombian dude with an afro, are you?

[Doctor Stop]

Advice?

Talk to a IP lawyer. Don't expect the process to be fast or cheap.

Madrid Protocol primer

[IkemenTommy]

I am assuming this is some form of technology related to mobile phone. Your product will reach its end-of-life by the time it goes through the entire approval process. It is entirely different if it is for food/drink/clothing type of product that will stay around for a long time.

[Iraira]

I'm not suggesting that you contact my company, but you could; just don't say it's me that recommended anything. I deny even saying the above. I deny the last sentence, too.

[Kuang_Grade]

I had a short lived job a trademark research firm in the US....it was short lived because after about 10 days I realized these guys were 85% fearmongering borderline con artists shaking down small business people with limited funds and/or just padding bills for work for legal firms who then triple those inflated fees for their corp. clients. These guys made used car salesmen seem like saints. This was not was how the job was presented to me in the interview (the 85% sales effort time and 15% actual research work), so I quit after the second week.

While I have no experience in global trademark issues, and my limited experience is based on the extremely litigious US environment....Be cautious about how you approach this, given you might uncover some stuff you rather not know from a legal standpoint (like you are actually already violating somebody else's trademark) and keep in mind if they actually do the work themselves or do they contract it out to some third party.

You also might want to look at it from where your main market is and go from there first, given the protection will likely be the greatest/most straight forward in the country where the trademark is domestically registered....it also might be easier/cheaper to do in one country vs another but this shit is complicated.

[Greji]

Anybody done this? What is the process, costs, time needed etc?

I want to register a brand name that we have used for a number of years but never registered before. I have looked around but don't think that anybody else has registered it anywhere.

I am wanting an international trademark - seems better to do it all in one go rather than country by country.

Advice?

Call the Embassy and ask for whoever's Honcho'ing AUSTRADE these days if you don't already know who it is. Since I've moved on and don't have work contacts there, I've lost contact with them. You should have run across them in the Aus Soc parties that you refuse to invite me to even though I furnish the stuff for the waitresses....

[IkemenTommy]

Call the Embassy...

Prepare to get your call transfered around from department to department and ducking all the red tape.

[amdg]

Gomi, I'm the one and only clearinghouse on this board for information about this topic and I've PM'ed you with my details. Cheers.