Protecting Your Company's Intellectual Property: A Practical Guide to Trademarks, Copyrights, Patents & Trade Secrets

The Trademark Application

Trademark applications can be made only by the owner of a mark, and the applicant's name should be set out in its correct legal form. Municipalities and government agencies can also own marks, as is the case with PATRIOT® , owned by the Department of the Army for its air defense missile system. Generally, applications are made by one party. The PTO is reluctant to accept applications by joint applicants because ownership of a mark by two people is contrary to the notion that a trademark identifies a single source of goods or services. An application for a mark owned by a partnership is thus made by the partnership itself rather than in the names of the individual partners. Applications must be in English, and although ...