How to trademark a name, whether a business name or a startup name, comes down to one counterintuitive truth: the most important step in trademark registration is not filing. It is searching, before you print a logo, buy the domain, or announce the name, to confirm you can legally use it. Founders routinely skip this, fall in love with a name, build a brand on it, and then receive a cease-and-desist or a USPTO refusal that forces a rename after real money and momentum are already committed. The registration process is mostly mechanical. The clearance is where the risk lives.
This guide covers the whole path: clearing the name, choosing a mark strong enough to protect, picking the right filing basis, filing with the USPTO, and surviving examination, plus the cost, the timeline, and the assumptions that quietly sink applications. It sits alongside the rest of your IP position, including who owns your code and, for AI-heavy products, why brand matters more when your content is hard to copyright.
Step one: search before you file the trademark
A clearance search looks for conflicts: existing federal registrations and pending applications, and also "common law" users who have unregistered rights from actually using a similar mark in commerce. The question is not only "is this exact name taken," but "is there a confusingly similar mark for related goods or services." Two different names can still conflict if customers would likely be confused about the source. A thorough search early is cheap insurance against the most expensive outcome in branding, which is discovering the problem after launch.
Step two: choose a mark you can actually protect
Not all names are equally protectable. Trademark strength runs along a spectrum, and where your name lands decides how easily it registers and how well you can enforce it.
- Fanciful (invented words like a made-up brand) and arbitrary (a real word unrelated to the product) marks are the strongest and easiest to protect.
- Suggestive marks hint at a quality without describing it and are protectable, with a bit more effort.
- Descriptive marks that just describe the product are weak and often refused unless they have acquired distinctiveness over time.
- Generic terms cannot be trademarked at all.
The practical lesson: the name that is easiest to market ("BestCloudInvoices") is often the hardest to protect, while a distinctive coined name is both defensible and, once known, memorable. Choosing the mark is a legal decision disguised as a creative one.
Register the entity, buy the domain, and you still may not own the brand. Trademark rights come from use and registration, not from a state filing or a URL.
Step three: pick your filing basis
The USPTO lets you file on one of two main bases, and the choice depends on where you are:
- Use in commerce. If you are already selling under the name across state lines, you file on a use basis and submit a specimen showing the mark in actual commercial use.
- Intent to use. If you have a bona fide intent to use the name but have not launched, you can file on an intent-to-use basis and stake a nationwide priority date now. You complete registration later by filing a Statement of Use, with its own fee, once you are actually selling.
For a pre-launch startup, the intent-to-use route is often the strategic one: it locks your place in line before a competitor files, which matters because US trademark priority rewards the earlier user or filer.
Step four: file, then handle examination
Applications are filed electronically through the USPTO Trademark Center. You choose the correct international class or classes (fees are per class), provide a clear representation of the mark, describe the goods or services, state your basis, and add a specimen if you are filing on use. As of the 2025 fee schedule, a TEAS Plus application, which requires you to select pre-approved descriptions, is $250 per class, and a TEAS Standard application, which allows custom descriptions, is $350 per class.
After filing, an examining attorney reviews the application, typically several months out. If they see a problem, likelihood of confusion with an existing mark, mere descriptiveness, or a procedural defect, they issue an office action, and you generally have three months to respond, extendable to six. Clear examination and publication, and the mark proceeds to registration. Start to finish is usually about 12 to 18 months.
After registration: it is not set-and-forget
Registration is the beginning of an obligation, not the end. You must keep using the mark and file maintenance documents on schedule to keep the registration alive, including a declaration of continued use between the fifth and sixth years and renewals every ten years. You also have to police the mark; trademark rights can weaken if you let others use confusingly similar marks unchallenged. Enforcement is part of ownership.
The mistakes that cost founders
Three recur. First, assuming the LLC filing or the domain gives brand rights; it does not, and this is the most common and most dangerous misconception. Second, skipping the clearance search to save a few weeks, then rebranding after launch at many times the cost. Third, picking a descriptive name that is easy to market and nearly impossible to protect. Investors notice: filed trademark applications are a routine diligence signal that a founder is treating the brand as an asset, and their absence is noticed too. It is one more line in the same diligence review that examines your equity and IP.
- Search before you commit: clearance is the step that prevents an expensive post-launch rename.
- Choose a fanciful or arbitrary mark; descriptive names are weak and generic ones cannot be registered.
- File use-in-commerce if you are selling, or intent-to-use to claim priority before launch.
- USPTO fees are per class: $250 (TEAS Plus) or $350 (TEAS Standard) per class as of 2025; expect roughly 12 to 18 months.
- An LLC name and a domain are not trademark rights; registration must be maintained and the mark policed.
A name is one of the few assets a company carries from day one to exit. Clearing and registering it early is inexpensive relative to the alternative, and it removes a risk that otherwise compounds silently as the brand grows more valuable and more expensive to change.
Related reading: who owns your startup's code, copyright for AI-generated content, and how to incorporate your startup. Or start a conversation about clearing your name.