No seriously. Why dontcha? Cuz it’s a pretty smart thing to do. Registering the trademark for your brand elements—your business name, logo, product name, tagline, for example—is a great way to protect your brand.

Trademark law gives you legal rights to the unique words, names, symbols, and sounds used to identify and distinguish the goods and services associated with your business in the marketplace. Since the goal is to be recognizable in the market, these brand elements are super valuable and should be protected as such.

Just like copyright, you’ve got common law trademark right when you begin using your trademark in business, attaching it to the goods or services you’re selling (as long as the trademark 
is not confusingly similar to, or diluting 
the value of, someone else’s trademark).

BUT, just like we always yammer on about when it comes to copyright, there are serious benefits to federal registration of your trademarks that are not available under common law:

Federal trademark registration solidifies your rights to the mark nationally. Common law trademark rights only give you rights to the mark in the geographic areas where you are actually selling products or services. Without federal registration, you may not have any claims of infringement if a competitor located in another state starts using the trademark.
Federal trademark registration creates a public record of your ownership of the mark and puts others on notice of your ownership of the mark. That’s right: it shouts it from the rooftops.

Federal trademark registration gives you the ability to file a lawsuit for trademark infringement in federal court and to seek higher damages from the infringer. (This is a huge deterrent to would-be infringers.)

Federal registration of your trademarks is an asset that can be sold, licensed, and otherwise used to make deals (cha-ching). Securing the trademarks associated with your brand will increase your company’s value when you want to obtain outside capital or sell your business. It also gives you the ability to license the use of your content, proprietary methods, brand name, and products to others, which expands the reach of your work and makes you more cash. (You could technically do it without the trademark registered, but that’s a very, very bad idea).

So take today’s tip to heart and register the trademark for your important brand elements.