How can I speed up the process of registering a trademark?

The trademark registration process usually takes several months. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about the standard processing times of a given intellectual property office, as the length of the process is dictated by the demand (some offices process hundreds of thousands of trademark applications each year) and by the offices doing their due diligence.

However, there are steps you can take to avoid unnecessary prolongation of your application's approval:

• Have all information and dates filled in in correct formats to avoid receiving the application back for corrections.
• Make sure your trademark is distinctive enough and not merely a generic or descriptive term. If it's the latter, sometimes you can opt for a figurative trademark and submit a logo instead. Knowing this from the start might save you one application dismissal. If you are unsure whether your trademark is distinctive enough, you can use our free lawyer's check to find out.
• Try to prevent oppositions from other similar trademarks. First, to avoid unnecessary surprises, it's good to know about other already registered trademarks that could be considered similar to yours. You can search for them in the IPO's database by yourself or order a professional trademark search where a lawyer, who knows what similarities to look for, prepares an assessment for you (trademark search is also a part of our free lawyer's check). The next steps then depend on the potential perceived similarity between your and your competitor's brand, including limiting the list of goods and services (meaning the scope of goods and services offered will not overlap) and, in the worst case, rebranding.
• When submitting the list of goods and services tied to your trademark, enter them in the version recognized by the respective office. The list of goods and services is not globally universal, and submitting an item name that doesn't correspond to the official list issued by the IPO can lead to an office action.