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7 posts in this category, newest first.
Trademark monitoring means watching for confusingly similar new filings and uses after you register, because the USPTO does not police the market for you. LawSensai watches for conflicts, sends infringement alerts, tracks renewal and maintenance deadlines, and connects you with an independent licensed attorney to respond.
Register a trademark with the USPTO by running a clearance search, filing an application in the correct class with a use or intent-to-use basis, then clearing examination and publication.
"Patent pending" is the most misunderstood phrase in startup pitch decks. It does not mean you have a patent. It does not mean your invention is protected. It means you have filed a placeholder, usually a provisional application at the USPTO, which gives you 12 months to file the real thing. Here is what that 12 months buys you, what it does not, and how to decide whether the conversion to a full patent application is worth the $5,000 to $15,000 it usually costs.
A 30-minute knockout search will not replace a full clearance search, but it will tell you whether the name you love is already off the table. Here is the workflow we use.
The January 2026 USPTO fee restructuring rewrote the math for small patent and trademark filers. Here is what changed, what stayed, and where strategy needs to shift.
Three forms of IP protection cover three different things. Pick the wrong one (or assume one of them protects something it does not) and you have spent money on a shield that does not cover the swing.
A provisional is a one-year option, not a patent. A non-provisional is the real thing. Here is when each makes sense, what the provisional actually buys you, and the drafting failures that cost founders the priority date.