Trademark (self publishing) is it worth it?

First, in no way am I a lawyer and what I state is based on my own knowledge.

You do not need to trademark any product/name that you do not wish to protect. The issue with not trademarking you product name, someone else can use the name and you have no legal means to stop them from using the same name.

You should at least investigate the name you are going to use, as to assure it is not already trademarked by another person/company. If you use a name that is already trademarked, you can be liable and could be sued. But I believe there are other ways to research the name, without having to pay $600, but I do not know off hand what you would need to do this.

If you do not trademark your product name, someone could always trademark it before you get a chance to down the road. Not sure what happens in this situation...

Bottom line, if you are about to invest "a lot" of money into the production and publishing of a game, you already have some confidence in it. If $250 or $600 is a small amount (with respect to all of the other prodution costs), it might be in your best interest to get a trademark. But that is something you have to decide.

I'm also not a lawyer. This comes from a course in information technology law I took years ago.

You can do the trademark search yourself at the uspto website, www.uspto.gov and save the $250.

Trademarks tend to have a very narrow range of things they cover. If you do use the search featureon that site, you'll see a "goods and services" field. You can produce something not listed in that field and use the same name without infringing the trademark. If a name is trademarked for something not game related, you can probably still use the name for a game (but definately see a lawyer first).

For example (from my class) pink is a registered trademark for fiberglass insulation. The filing is http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=8bsr2g.5.21
That means if you make fiberglass insulation, you can't make it pink, but you can still make other other pink products. Their trademark doesn't give them exclusive use of the color pink except in a very narrow area.

If you do a search for pink, you'll find over a thousand matches that (hopefully) don't infringe on each other.

The most important point is enforcement. Just because you have a registered trademark, it doesn't automatically protect you. If someone infringes on your trademark, you will have to hire lawyers to stop them and that will make the $600 look like a drop in the bucket. To make matters worse, trademark law is designed as a use it or lose it type of things. If you don't send in the lawyers to defend your trademark you will lose your rights to it.

From the other posts in the thread it looks like it might be unclear what a trademark is. It only protects a name or a symbol used in place of a name (a logo). If you get a trademark for your game, it would not in any way mean someone else isn't allowed to make an identical game with only the name changed. To protect the artwork/etc you're talking about copyright.

Jason