

Worth it to register a trademark for a software product that is being developed? - adziki
http://answers.onstartups.com/q/15198/4272

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martinkallstrom
It might end up being worth it. In 2006 we registered twingly.com, while a
startup in the US registered twing.com. Twing and Twingly are similar enough
to sue for cease and desist, especially since our businesses areas overlapped
very much. Us being a search engine for blogs and them a search engine for
discussion fora.

By the time we found out about each other, we had registered Twingly as a
trademark in EU and Twing was pending registration in the US. Thus, we had
symmetrical leverage on each other and the negotiations for an agreement of
global, peaceful co-existance was hassle-free. It was in both our interests to
get it in place. None of us had in their minds to attack the other but didn't
know to trust the other in the long run. If you end up building the next
Google you don't want someone around with the ability to take an easy shot at
your business.

To conclude, I think both of our companies were happy we registered our
trademarks early on.

Since then however, Twing was deadpooled after their financers pulled the
plug. On another note, Twitter and Twine were also started in 2006, without
anyone of us being aware of each other until after some time. It was simply a
year for startup names starting with Twi, as it seems.

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Keyframe
umm <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twingo>

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jfarmer
I would. My current company has a great product name. We got the .com domain,
but the Twitter name is taken by a person with 1 follower, 1 following, and no
tweets.

When I showed Twitter our domain and product and asked if we could have the
Twitter handle, I got a form letter response telling me they only hand over
names if we prove we have trademark.

For me, that alone would be worth it.

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sovande
I was just thinking about this. From the linked discussion it seems to be
something a non-lawer can do. Does anyone have a pointer to how to best start
this process and the approximate cost in EU or in the US?

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bananaandapple
You can file for an european trademark directly online on the european
trademark website.

It costs about 1300€ (as far as I can remember) for 3 categories, 150€ for
each category. It will take you some time however to fill out the forms, and
select the proper phrases.

You can always remove clauses from your registration, but never add clauses!

If there is a conflict (and there most certainly is one ;-)), be sure to hire
an expert.

You have to use it in the european union for it to be valid.

