rcjordan - 7:17 pm on Jan 25, 2001 (gmt 0)

Actually, you may need to trademark your logo, too. If I were just protecting my turf and needed to watch the budget, I'd trademark the business name. Subsequent trademark searches by competitors would then likely return your mark and deter them.

Expect to spend US$1500 - 2000 per trademark. There are no gurantees that you will be awarded the mark, but you can ask for a preliminary review which will give you a good idea if you're going to run into trouble. But just getting to that decision point can cost you $500 or more in legal fees.

Also, search on "trademark" down in the domain name forum, NFFC once put up a free online search site that was pretty good.

Oh, and don't be too surprised if you learn that YOU are already infringing on someone else's mark.