“A trade­mark is a word, phrase, sym­bol or design, or a com­bi­na­tion of words, phras­es, sym­bols or designs, that iden­ti­fies and dis­tin­guish­es the source of the goods of one par­ty from those of oth­ers.” — USPTO — Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Office 
Flower Duet is delight­ed to announce that we are offi­cial­ly a reg­is­tered trade­mark.  The basic func­tion of a trade­mark is to exclu­sive­ly iden­ti­fy a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness as the source of goods or ser­vices.  This was a long process, or so I thought, of about 1.5 years. How­ev­er I have been advised that this is a process that some­times takes years and lots of money. 
The Trade­mark Office, based just over the Potomac Riv­er from Wash­ing­ton, DC in Alexan­dria, VA, assigns you a trade­mark attor­ney to han­dle your “Mark”. They are acces­si­ble and will direct you if you are a lit­tle lost as you try to fol­low the prompts and pro­ce­dures. Cost can be as low as $350.00 if you stay on top of it and sub­mit infor­ma­tion accord­ing­ly.  Once you have reg­is­tered for a Trade­mark, you are “Ambu­lanced Chased” by lawyers who “spe­cial­ize in han­dling your pro­ceed­ings.” I resist­ed and thought, I will give this a go!  I have an acquain­tance who spent $7000 with out­side lawyers to Trade­mark a char­ac­ter she cre­at­ed. The Trade­mark office attor­ney assigned to us was there to help.  My advice if you need to trade­mark your busi­ness name or prod­uct — be patient, read, fol­low the instruc­tions and ask for help.  It real­ly works!