Federal Registration vs. Indiana State Trademark Registration

22 Thursday Oct 2026

Posted by in Indiana, Intellectual Property, Trademark

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Indiana will register a trademark for ten dollars. The filing is on INBiz. The term is five years. The Secretary of State wants a specimen showing the mark is already in use in the state. That is the whole transaction. It is useful. It is also the source of more confident emails than it deserves.

The Indiana Trademark Act, Indiana Code 24-2, is a state registry. It is not the Lanham Act with a smaller map. The Secretary of State’s own page says the office does not resolve ownership fights, and that accepting a filing does not establish rights in the mark. The applicant is told to check other states and the USPTO. A lot of applicants do not.

What the $10 actually buys

A live Indiana registration is evidence that you claimed the mark, for the goods or services you listed, as of the filing. It can support a state-law infringement claim. Common-law rights are preserved either way — IC 24-2-1-15 says the chapter does not wipe them out. If your customers, your sign, and your competitors are all in one Indiana county, the state filing can be a cheap way to put a date on the public record.

That is the “enough” case. A one-location shop. A local service name. No plan to ship, franchise, or open in Louisville. Even then, the filing does not clear the name. It records it.

Where it becomes a trap

The trap is treating the certificate like a deed.

It does not reach Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, or Michigan. A food truck that works the Indiana State Fair and a festival in Cincinnati is already outside the paper. It does not put the mark in the federal database that a later applicant’s search is built on. It does not stop someone else from filing at the USPTO. It does not give you nationwide constructive notice. It does not let you record with Customs. It does not, by itself, get you into federal court.

This blog has already watched the mismatch. In the Legacy chiropractor fight, one side filed a federal application and the other obtained an Indiana registration the same morning. Two offices. Two pieces of paper. One lawsuit in the Northern District. In Twisted Tater, the plaintiff had Indiana registrations — a logo from 2016, the word mark in April 2024 — and filed federally two days before the word-mark state filing. The state certificates did not end the argument. They became part of the complaint.

Same-day races are the tell. If both sides think a ten-dollar filing settles a name that has been in use for years, somebody has been reading the certificate as a judgment. The Secretary of State does not issue those.

The ® still does not attach

The federal registration symbol is for a mark the USPTO has registered. An Indiana certificate is not that. A pending federal application is not that either. Use TM until the federal registration issues, and only on the goods or services in that registration. The longer version is in the 2026 ® post.

Putting ® next to a state registration number is how a local filing becomes an exhibit in somebody else’s fraud paragraph. Do not do that.

Which one to file

File the state mark if you want a cheap Indiana record and you already use the name here. File federally if the name matters outside one market, if you want the presumptions that come with a Principal Register registration, or if you would rather be the person who shows up in a clearance search. The fee math for that filing is in the 2026 fee edition. The state fee is not a discount on the federal one. They are different rights.

You can hold both. Plenty of Indiana businesses do. Just do not tell a competitor, or a customer, that the INBiz receipt is the one that counts nationwide. The Secretary of State already told you it does not.

Stay tuned for the docket notes.

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis

Nelson Alarm sues Former Co-owner over nelsonalarm.net

14 Wednesday Oct 2026

Posted by in Indiana, Intellectual Property, Litigation, Southern District of Indiana

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In April 2015, Security Masters Corporation bought the assets of Nelson Alarm, Inc. The deal, an asset purchase agreement that Daniel E. Nelson signed personally, included the “Nelson Alarm” business and trademark name and the goodwill that went with it. Security Masters has done business as Nelson Alarm in Indianapolis since the closing. It says it has used the name continuously for the sale and installation of home and business security systems.

In July 2026, Security Masters learned that nelsonalarm.net had been registered on April 19, 2024, and was redirecting traffic to dnaintegrators.com, the site of D-N-A Integrators, Inc. Daniel E. Nelson is the founder and president of that company. The Complaint (below) says the two firms sell to the same buyers. A letter went out on July 8, 2026, demanding that the use stop and that the domain be transferred. The redirect came down. The parties were otherwise unable to find a suitable resolution. Security Masters now seeks the intervention of the Southern District.

Security Masters Corporation d/b/a Nelson Alarm v. D-N-A Integrators, Inc. and Daniel E. Nelson

Court Case Number: 1:26-cv-02112-JPH-MKK
File Date: October 1, 2026
Plaintiff: Security Masters Corporation d/b/a Nelson Alarm
Plaintiff Counsel: Deborah Pollack-Milgate and David A.W. Wong of Barnes & Thornburg LLP
Defendants: D-N-A Integrators, Inc. and Daniel E. Nelson
Cause: Breach of Contract; Federal Unfair Competition and False Designation of Origin; Common-law Unfair Competition and Trademark Infringement; Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
Court: Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division
Judge: James Patrick Hanlon
Referred To: M. Kendra Klump

Security Masters filed Serial No. 99900763 for NELSON ALARM on June 23, 2026, covering installation and monitoring of security and fire alarms, design and testing of the systems, and related services in Classes 37, 42, and 45. The application was awaiting examination when the complaint was filed. The suit does not need a registration certificate to plead § 1125(a) or the state claims. It does plead that the name was distinctive when the domain was registered, and that the registration was in bad faith.

The relief asked for is the usual set for this kind of file: an injunction against use of NELSON ALARM or anything confusingly similar, transfer of nelsonalarm.net, an accounting, damages, trebling where the statute allows it, statutory damages under the ACPA of up to $100,000 for the domain, destruction of materials bearing the mark, and fees. A jury is demanded.

Stay tuned for updates.

Complaint:

Security Masters Corporation ComplaintDownload

Copyright Registration Before You Sue (and Why Photographers Keep Learning This the Hard Way)

08 Thursday Oct 2026

Posted by in Copyright, Intellectual Property, Litigation

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A photographer in Indianapolis shoots a wedding, a storefront, a plate of food. The picture shows up on someone else’s website. A friend says “send a cease-and-desist.” Another friend says “sue them.” Both friends skip the part that actually matters under the Copyright Act: for a United States work, you generally cannot file a civil infringement suit until the Copyright Office has registered the work. Not applied. Registered.

That is §411(a). The Supreme Court closed the “I filed the application last Tuesday” loophole in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com. The certificate has to issue, or the Office has to refuse the application. An online deposit and a credit-card receipt are not a registration.

Two clocks, not one

Registration gets you in the courthouse door. A timely registration is what gets you statutory damages and attorneys’ fees under §412.

Timely means the registration was made before the infringement started, or within three months after first publication. Miss that window and you can still sue for actual damages and profits – if you can prove them. Proving what one scraped JPEG was worth, and what the restaurant actually made because of it, is how a $750 problem becomes a $15,000 problem that you cannot recover.

This is the part photographers keep learning the hard way. The picture was published on a portfolio site in March. The scrape happened in November. The registration was filed in December, after the angry email. The suit is allowed once the certificate issues. The statutory-damages count is not.

What “register the work” actually means

You register the photograph, or the group of photographs, not the business name and not the camera. Unpublished photos can go in as a group. Published photos have their own group option if they were published in the same calendar year and you meet the Office’s rules. A wedding gallery is not automatically one work. A year’s Instagram feed is not automatically one work.

The deposit has to be the work you intend to sue on. A low-res web crop of a different edit is how people pick fights with the Office that they did not need.

Foreign works have a different path into court. Most of the complaints this blog sees in the Southern and Northern Districts are U.S. photographs, U.S. software, U.S. text. Those need the certificate.

The cease-and-desist is not a substitute

A letter can ask the other side to take the picture down. It can preserve a claim. It cannot manufacture a registration date you do not have. If the plan is federal court, file the application first and wait. The Office is faster than it used to be. It is not same-afternoon fast.

If the plan is only a takedown, a registration still helps. Platforms and hosts are more likely to act on a registration number than on a caption that says “© 2026.”

What this blog will keep watching

When a copyright complaint lands in Indianapolis or Hammond and the registration dates are in the complaint – they usually are – those dates tell you which remedies are even in play. A complaint that pleads statutory damages on a work registered after the scrape is making a claim the statute does not give it. That is a drafting problem, not a jury problem.

Register the pictures you care about. Do it when you publish them, or at least within three months. Then worry about the letter.

Stay tuned for the docket updates.

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis

What a BMI Bar Case Is (and Why This Blog Will Usually Skip Them)

05 Monday Oct 2026

Posted by in Copyright, Indiana, Intellectual Property, Litigation

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Broadcast Music, Inc. licenses the public performance of songs in its repertoire. When a bar, restaurant, or grill plays that music without a license, BMI and the publishers sue. The complaint names the venue and, often, the owners. It lists a handful of songs performed on a given night. It asks for statutory damages, an injunction, and fees. Indiana federal courts see these cases on a regular basis. The latest is Broadcast Music, Inc. v. Dagger’z Bar and Grill LLC, 4:26-cv-00265, filed September 24, 2026, against the Jeffersonville bar and two individuals.

That is the whole pattern. There is no fight over who wrote the songs, no fair-use argument that goes anywhere, and rarely an answer. The defendant takes a license, settles, or defaults. A consent judgment or a default judgment follows. The docket is short because the legal question is short: the songs were performed in public, and there was no license.

This blog is for named local disputes with something to read – a mark, a specimen, a story that is not the same story as last year’s bar. A BMI filing is technically a copyright lawsuit, and thus we don’t want to ignore them completely. However, they will no longer get their own post. If one of the BMI lawsuits turns into a real contest over ownership or a defense that is not “we will pay,” that one might earn a write-up. Until then, BMI cases will just appear in the monthly updates.

Stay tuned for new cases with something left to say after the complaint.

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis

What a Schedule A Case Is (and Why This Blog Usually Skips Them)

02 Friday Oct 2026

Posted by in Copyright, Indiana, Intellectual Property, Litigation, Trademark, Northern District of Indiana

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If you scan the Northern District of Indiana copyright and trademark indexes, you will keep seeing captions like Plaintiff v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A. That is not a missing name. That is the case. The real defendants – often dozens or hundreds of Amazon, eBay, Temu, or Shopify storefronts – are listed on a sealed exhibit filed with the complaint. Counsel asks for a temporary restraining order, an asset freeze, and leave to serve by email. Many of those defendants never appear. Defaults follow. The docket looks busy but the local story is thin.

These filings started as a Northern District of Illinois habit and migrated. Hammond now sees a regular diet of them. Some are trademark counterfeiting. Some are copyright. The plaintiff is often a brand or a designer with no Indiana office. The “Indiana” connection is venue and a magistrate who will sign a TRO. That is enough for the statute. It is not enough for the kind of post this blog is for.

This site follows named parties, local businesses, university marks, and the occasional food truck that could not sort out a cease-and-desist. A sealed schedule of overseas sellers does not give you that. There is usually no public complaint worth quoting, no Indiana hook beyond the case number, and no answer coming. When a Schedule A filing names a real local defendant or turns into something other than a default mill, it will earn a post. Until then, you will see those captions in the monthly wrap, if at all, and not as a standalone post.

Stay tuned for the cases with names on both sides of the “v.”

Kenan L. Farrell, KLF Legal, Indianapolis