Should You Trademark Your Online Course?

Should you trademark your online course?

So you built an online course. That's great! A lot of people are doing it and I absolutely love the education community….learn things, educate, build businesses…it’s fantastic, whatever you need to do or learn, there's always a resource out there. There's a lot of them and that means that you really need to seek protection of your online course name. So, yes, you can trademark your online course and yes, you absolutely should trademark your online course!

What happens if you build a following or a brand and people know to Google the name of your online course? They type it in quickly, you pop up because you're the only one with that name. That's great, right? Now people can go to your course, purchase, interact, build your community, build your tribe….those are all the things we want to happen.

Now, what happens if you don't have that protection? Someone else comes along with the same name or they claim they had it first, your following goes to Google it…they pop up first. They're not sure who this is but it's very similar to what you do. They go along with them because that's who pops up and unfortunately, that's what happens.

This is why it is so important that we protect our online course name. Trademark registration of your online course will let you be really the only one. If someone else is using your name with an online course, you now have grounds to shut them down. Without that trademark protection, it's extremely difficult to do so–you should totally trademark the name of your online course! It's really one of those things that has to be on your “must list” at this point.

If you've just started or you've invested in some platform like Kajabi or Teachable to build out your course, setting up your trademark should also be on your list of expenses and processes to work through. At this point, with the online world as noisy and loud and big as it is, it’s best to go ahead and set up trademark protection for your online course on the front end–so you don’t have to deal with a lot of issues on the back end.

If you've already launched your course and you have some following, that is fantastic! Congratulations on your success! I would say budget that money for trademark protection and make sure that you protect the thing that is making you money. You don’t want to risk that you're not going to be able to bring in revenue in the future!

If we can help you trademark your course please reach out to us today!