Trademarks for Sale: How to Know if a Brand for Sale Is Legit

The other day I was sitting at the park with some friends and family. A friend of my sister’s was talking about how she’s starting her own business. I asked her about her business and she brought up the inevitable questions every new business owner asks, like how or if she should form an LLC. […]
How to Buy a Trademark

Many business owners are interested in creating a brand new name for a business and then trademarking that name, but you can in fact buy an existing trademark from another entity. It’s not very common, but it is possible. You can buy a trademark if you want to use it for the same goods/services (class) […]
5 BrandBucket Names That Could Get You Sued Part II

In my previous post, I detailed some of the ways BrandBucket conflates domain names with brand names. In other words, they pretend they’re a marketplace for brand names when they’re really a marketplace for internet addresses. As a branding expert, here is my response to this idea, which you’ll see a lot if you read […]
How Much Is My Trademark Worth? With Valuation Examples.

In my previous post on my law firm’s blog about appraising trademarks, I gave a very detailed explanation of my formula for determining the value of a little-used or little-known registered trademark that is not being sold in combination with a turnkey, profitable business. In this post, I want to show you how those principles […]
Brand Names for Sale? Not at Domain Marketplaces.

Do you remember when Apple bought Beats by Dre for $3 billion in 2014? Why do you think Beats was worth $3 billion to Apple? Was it because Apple wanted the beatsbydre.com domain name? No, Apple was primarily paying for the Beats brand, which essentially means they were paying for the Beats trademark. The single […]
Trademark Brokers: What to Look for

The pickings are slim. There aren’t a lot of trademark brokers out there because trademark selling is a niche market. Most trademark sellers aren’t just selling trademarks; they’re selling entire businesses. Thus there are many business brokers and few brokers of trademarks. Because of this, somebody looking for a trademark broker is probably going to […]
Why Is Every Trademark Marketplace Awful?

Everybody knows trademarks are worth money, even if they haven’t thought about it much. When Coach bought rival handbag company Kate Spade for $2.4 billion in 2017, they presumably weren’t paying all this money just to get access to factories and designers; they were mainly paying for the “Kate Spade” name and the goodwill consumers […]