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How to Trademark a Slogan or Tagline

April 26, 2026 Aruna 13 min read
how to trademark a slogan — intellectual property law and protection

Slogans and taglines are some of the most memorable elements of a brand’s identity. “Just Do It,” “Think Different,” “I’m Lovin’ It” — these phrases are instantly recognizable and worth millions. If your business has a powerful tagline, learning how to trademark a slogan is essential for protecting this valuable brand asset. PerspireIP helps businesses navigate the specific requirements and challenges involved in registering slogans and taglines as trademarks.

Can You Trademark a Slogan?

Yes, you can trademark a slogan, but slogans face heightened scrutiny from USPTO examiners compared to brand names and logos. The USPTO is cautious about granting exclusive trademark rights to common phrases because doing so could effectively remove those phrases from public use. However, slogans that are distinctive and function as brand identifiers — rather than merely informational phrases — are registrable.

The key legal requirement to trademark a slogan is that it must function as a trademark, meaning it must identify and distinguish the source of goods or services. A slogan that is purely informational, motivational, or commonly used in the relevant industry may not qualify for trademark protection without evidence of acquired distinctiveness.

What Makes a Slogan Registrable?

Several factors determine whether a slogan can be successfully trademarked. First, the slogan must be distinctive — it should stand out as a brand identifier rather than blend into the background of common commercial language. Invented or unusual phrases are more likely to be registrable than common expressions or phrases that merely describe a benefit of the product.

  • Distinctive and unique phrasing that is not commonly used in the industry
  • The phrase must function as a brand identifier, not just a descriptive statement
  • Long and exclusive use in commerce can establish acquired distinctiveness
  • The slogan must not be merely informational or motivational without trademark function
  • The slogan must not be functional — serving a utilitarian purpose beyond branding

Common Reasons Slogan Trademark Applications Are Refused

Slogan trademark applications face specific challenges that are less common with word marks and logos. The most common reasons the USPTO refuses to trademark a slogan include failure to function as a mark, mere descriptiveness, and likelihood of confusion with an existing registered slogan.

Failure to function is the most common refusal for slogans. The USPTO takes the position that phrases widely used in commerce as informational statements — such as “Quality You Can Trust” or “America’s Best” — do not function as trademarks because consumers perceive them as promotional messages rather than brand identifiers. Overcoming a failure-to-function refusal requires evidence that consumers actually associate the slogan with your specific brand.

How to Build Acquired Distinctiveness for Your Slogan

If your slogan faces a failure-to-function or descriptiveness refusal, you may be able to overcome it by proving acquired distinctiveness, also known as secondary meaning. This requires demonstrating that through long and exclusive use in commerce, consumers have come to recognize the slogan as identifying your brand specifically.

Evidence of acquired distinctiveness that PerspireIP helps clients develop and present includes declarations from consumers attesting to their recognition of the slogan as your brand identifier, advertising expenditures showing substantial investment in promoting the slogan, sales figures demonstrating commercial success, length and exclusivity of use, unsolicited media coverage connecting the slogan to your brand, and consumer surveys showing recognition.

Filing Your Slogan Trademark Application

The process to trademark a slogan follows the same general steps as any trademark application. You must file through the USPTO TEAS system, selecting the appropriate application form and filing basis. For slogans, the standard character mark form is typically used because slogans are usually protected as text rather than in a specific font or stylization.

The identification of goods and services must be carefully drafted to cover all the commercial contexts in which the slogan is used. The specimen must show the slogan used as a trademark — appearing on product packaging, in advertising, or on a website in a way that identifies the source of goods or services. Slogans that appear only in the interior of a lengthy advertisement, without prominent trademark use, may not be accepted as specimens.

Protecting Your Slogan Before Registration

While pursuing trademark registration for your slogan, use the ™ symbol to put the public on notice of your claimed trademark rights. Document your use of the slogan consistently, including dates of first use and geographic extent of use. Build a file of marketing materials, advertisements, and other evidence showing the slogan in commercial use — this documentation will be valuable if you need to prove acquired distinctiveness or prior rights in the future.

International Slogan Trademark Protection

If your brand operates internationally, protecting your slogan in key markets is just as important as domestic registration. However, slogan registrability standards vary by country — some countries are more willing to register slogans than the USPTO, while others have even stricter standards. PerspireIP can advise on international slogan trademark strategy and coordinate filings through the Madrid Protocol or direct national applications.

Protecting Your Slogan Across Digital Channels

Once you have successfully registered your slogan as a trademark, protecting it across digital channels requires ongoing vigilance. Digital platforms create new opportunities for slogan infringement that did not exist in the traditional media environment. Competitors may use your registered slogan in paid search advertising, social media content, website metadata, or e-commerce product listings in ways that create confusion about brand affiliation.

Paid search advertising presents a particularly complex challenge for slogan trademark protection. When a competitor purchases your registered slogan as a keyword to trigger their ads in search results, this may or may not constitute trademark infringement depending on how the ad itself uses the slogan. Most courts have held that keyword advertising does not constitute trademark use in itself, but ads that actually display the trademarked slogan in the ad copy may cross the line into infringement. PerspireIP monitors paid search activity for our clients’ registered slogans and advises on appropriate responses when infringing ad copy is detected.

Social media presents another enforcement challenge because user-generated content using your slogan spreads virally and is difficult to control. When a registered slogan is used in a way that suggests unauthorized brand sponsorship or affiliation — for example, a viral post that uses your slogan to promote a competitor’s product — trademark infringement may be actionable. PerspireIP helps clients develop social media monitoring and response protocols that protect registered slogans without overreaching in ways that generate negative publicity.

Use the ™ or ® symbol consistently with your slogan across all digital channels. This consistent use of the trademark symbol serves both a legal function (establishing your claim to the mark) and a practical function (educating consumers and competitors that the slogan is your registered trademark). PerspireIP can audit your current digital brand assets and identify where trademark symbols should be added to strengthen your slogan trademark protection.

Slogan Trademarks and Campaign Branding

Many businesses create new slogans and taglines for specific marketing campaigns without considering whether those slogans could or should be trademarked. While not every campaign slogan is worth protecting, a particularly effective slogan that resonates with consumers and becomes closely associated with your brand may be worth trademarking — either during the campaign while it is gaining recognition, or after the campaign when its consumer impact is documented.

Campaign slogans present both an opportunity and a challenge for trademark protection. The opportunity is that a successful campaign can build consumer recognition of a slogan remarkably quickly — if your campaign is a hit, the slogan may develop secondary meaning and trademark significance in a fraction of the time it would take for a slogan used in normal commerce. The challenge is that campaign slogans are often created by advertising agencies that may retain copyright in the slogan’s creative expression, and the brand must ensure it obtains proper assignment of all rights in campaign creative before filing a trademark application.

PerspireIP advises clients on slogan trademark strategy at all stages of brand development, from initial campaign concept through trademark registration and beyond. We help clients build the evidence of consumer recognition needed to overcome failure-to-function and descriptiveness rejections, and we coordinate with advertising agencies and creative vendors to ensure that all necessary IP assignments are in place before filing. Contact PerspireIP at the beginning of your campaign planning process — not after — to maximize your slogan trademark protection strategy.

Using Your Slogan Trademark Strategically

A registered slogan trademark is a versatile commercial asset that can be used strategically across multiple marketing contexts. Once registered, you can use the ® symbol with your slogan in all advertising and marketing materials, which signals to consumers and competitors that your slogan is federally protected. This notice function deters competitors from adopting similar slogans and gives you stronger grounds for enforcement if someone does attempt to use a similar phrase.

Licensing your registered slogan to business partners, co-branding partners, or authorized resellers can extend the slogan’s reach while generating licensing revenue. A powerful slogan that has become closely associated with your brand can be licensed across product extensions, geographic markets, or industry verticals where you do not directly compete, allowing your brand message to reach new audiences while maintaining your core trademark rights. PerspireIP drafts slogan trademark license agreements that capture licensing revenue, maintain quality control, and protect the distinctiveness of your registered slogan. Contact us today to explore how your registered slogan trademark can work harder for your business.

Failure to Function: The Refusal That Acquired Distinctiveness Cannot Fix

There is a distinction buried in slogan practice that decides whether a refusal is survivable, and it is routinely missed. A slogan can be refused because it is merely descriptive of the goods, or it can be refused because it fails to function as a mark at all. The two refusals look similar on the Office action and behave completely differently.

Merely informational matter is the failure-to-function case. TMEP 1202.04 treats matter as merely informational, and therefore unregistrable, where consumers would perceive it as conveying general information about the goods or services, or an informational message, rather than as a means of identifying and distinguishing one trader’s goods from another’s. Commonly used slogans and phrases, and social, political or religious messages in common use, fall into the same category of widely used messages.

The statutory basis depends on which register you asked for. If registration is sought on the Principal Register, the refusal is grounded in §§1, 2 and 45 of the Trademark Act. If you sought the Supplemental Register, the basis is §§23 and 45.

Here is the part that matters commercially. An applicant cannot overcome a refusal that the matter is merely informational by amending to the Supplemental Register, or by claiming acquired distinctiveness under §2(f). The usual escape routes are closed. That is a different world from a descriptiveness refusal, where both the Supplemental Register and a §2(f) showing are genuinely available once you have the evidence.

  • Merely descriptive — survivable. The Supplemental Register is available now; §2(f) is available with evidence of acquired distinctiveness.
  • Merely informational / fails to function — not survivable by amendment. Neither the Supplemental Register nor §2(f) cures it.
  • Read the refusal carefully before building an evidence file: a §2(f) showing assembled against a failure-to-function refusal is money spent on the wrong problem.

So the first question on receiving a refusal is not “how much evidence do we need?” but “which refusal is this?” If the examining attorney is saying the public will read the phrase as a message rather than as a badge of origin, the answer is usually a different phrase, or a different way of using the existing one, rather than a bigger declaration.

Deciding how to trademark a slogan: Principal Register, Supplemental Register, or Neither

Once the two refusal types are separated, the strategic question becomes tractable. The practical approach to how to trademark a slogan is to work out, before filing, which of three honest positions your phrase occupies, because each one implies a different filing.

Inherently distinctive. The slogan is suggestive rather than descriptive of the goods, and does not read as a stock phrase. File on the Principal Register and expect the examination to turn on prior marks rather than on the nature of the phrase. This is the only position that gives you the full benefit of registration from the start.

Descriptive but capable. The slogan describes a feature or benefit, but it is being used as a brand and the public could come to treat it as one. The Supplemental Register is a legitimate holding position: it gives you a registration, a basis for an opposition, and use of the registration symbol, and it does not foreclose a later Principal Register application supported by a §2(f) showing. Five years of substantially exclusive and continuous use is the conventional benchmark for that evidence, but it is a benchmark and not a guarantee.

Informational. The slogan is a message the public is used to seeing from many sources. No register will take it, and no amount of advertising spend changes that analysis. The right response is to treat the phrase as uncapturable and protect the brand elsewhere — in the word mark, the logo, or a distinctive element within the campaign.

The reason to make this assessment before filing rather than after the first Office action is cost. A failure-to-function refusal does not usually improve with argument, and the filing fee is not refundable. Working out how to trademark a slogan therefore starts with an unsentimental read of the phrase itself, in the voice of a consumer who has never heard of your company.

What the Specimen Has to Show, and Why Slogans Fail Here

Slogan applications fail at the specimen stage more often than at the search stage, and for a reason specific to slogans: the specimen has to show the phrase being used as a mark, not merely appearing in your advertising.

A phrase printed in body copy, in a headline above a paragraph of marketing prose, or as the closing line of a commercial, is doing the job of advertising. The same phrase on the product, on the packaging, on a label, or displayed in a way that sets it apart from the surrounding copy is doing the job of a mark. The visual question an examining attorney asks is whether the phrase stands apart from its surroundings enough that a consumer would take it as a source indicator.

This has a practical consequence for intent-to-use filings. If you file under §1(b) and plan to perfect the application later, decide at the outset how the slogan will physically appear on the goods or in the rendering of services. A campaign that only ever uses the phrase as a tagline in advertising copy may never generate a specimen that works, and discovering that after allowance is an expensive way to learn it.

  • Set the phrase apart typographically — different weight, size, placement or colour from the surrounding copy.
  • Use it on the goods, packaging or labels where the nature of the product allows it, not only in advertising.
  • For services, show it in the rendering or advertising of the service with a clear association to the service itself.
  • Avoid specimens where the phrase reads as a sentence within a paragraph; that is the classic refusal fact pattern.

Conclusion

Trademarking a slogan requires understanding the specific legal standards that apply to these types of marks and building a strategy to meet them. With the right preparation, presentation, and persistence, registering your slogan as a trademark is achievable. PerspireIP has the experience to guide you through the process, overcome potential refusals, and secure strong trademark protection for your tagline. Contact us today to discuss protecting your slogan.