For Tampa, St. Pete and Clearwater businesses that are already open and selling.
Restaurants, breweries, studios, practices, product brands and service companies with a name people know. One local attorney, one flat fee, from the search to the registration certificate.
Citrus Legal is based in St. Pete. This is home, and most of my clients are Tampa Bay businesses.
Each one makes a rename harder.
More businesses means more names competing for the same words. The first one to protect a name usually decides who keeps it.
Hillsborough County had 42,977 employer businesses in 2023 and Pinellas had 32,509, plus more than 326,000 nonemployer businesses between them in 2024.
Tourism in Pinellas had more than $10 billion in economic impact in 2025, with nearly 15 million overnight visitors. Your customers take your name home with them.
Tampa Bay has the second-largest manufacturing base in Florida, and the I-4 corridor has the state’s largest concentration of distribution centers. Products named here sell everywhere.
All three happened to local businesses. None of them ended in court.
In 2019 the owner of Tampa’s Brew Bus sued over the name of a new restaurant, Florida Avenue Eats. Its owner argued Florida Avenue is a public road. Neither side had registered the name, so the fight ran on common law rights. It settled, and the restaurant became Florida Eats.
In 2024, Outback’s parent company sent a St. Pete vegan restaurant a cease-and-desist over a Restaurant Week dish called the "Blooming onion" and a logo used with it. The restaurant renamed the dish "Onion Blossom." Big brands watch small menus.
In 2023, Cafe Con Tampa, which holds a trademark on "Cafe Con," sent a cease-and-desist over the Tampa Bay Latin Chamber’s "Cafe Con Conexiones" events. The Chamber changed the name. A registration is what made the letter work.
Florida keeps three separate records, and none of them is a federal trademark.
Filing with the Florida Division of Corporations creates the company. It doesn’t check whether anyone else already uses the name as a brand.
Registering a d/b/a lets you do business under another name in Florida. It gives you no exclusive right to that name.
Florida registers marks at the state level, and that protection stops at the state line. A federal registration covers all fifty states from one filing.
Free and low-cost help for the parts of your business that aren’t trademarks.
No-cost consulting and training across Pinellas and Hillsborough, based at USF CONNECT in Tampa.
Free, confidential mentoring and workshops for St. Pete, Clearwater and greater Pinellas.
St. Pete’s front door for business growth, run by the City and the St. Petersburg Area Chamber: navigators, consulting, workshops and 1 Million Cups.
Free, confidential growth consulting for existing businesses at the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center in Tampa.
The Tampa Bay Business Accelerator, networking programs and Small Business of the Year awards.
A nonprofit, zero-equity tech accelerator and a nonprofit founder support hub, both in Tampa.
One mark is $2,600 flat, plus the $350 USPTO fee per class. Pay once, or in two or three payments. Questions by email are free.
Most Tampa Bay businesses own more than one mark: the name, the logo, a product line, a location brand. The fee is set by how many marks you protect now. See everything the fee covers.
Your business name, or the one product everyone knows you for.
Or three payments of $950. Plus the $350 USPTO fee per class.
Name plus logo, or name plus tagline.
Or three payments of $1,735. Plus the $350 USPTO fee per class.
A brand with a few core offers, each with a name of its own.
Or three payments of $2,520. Plus the $350 USPTO fee per class.
A suite of products, programs or locations, protected together.
Or three payments of $3,285. Plus the $350 USPTO fee per class.
The whole brand, filed at once.
Or three payments of $4,050. Plus the $350 USPTO fee per class.
Every application Citrus Legal has filed has been approved. Zero refusals so far.
If my written opinion rates your mark low risk and the examiner refuses it anyway, I prepare and file a new application for a new mark at no attorney fee. You pay only the USPTO filing fee.
If the first search comes back high risk, I search one new name at no charge, so you are never stuck paying to find out a name was never available.
Every mark is one flat fee, agreed in writing before any work starts. Procedural Office Actions are included. Nothing arrives as a surprise invoice.
Never a paralegal, never a chatbot. I am Gabrielle Maria Crawford, Esq., founder of Citrus Legal. I run your search myself, write the opinion myself, and handle your filing myself.
Admitted to The Florida Bar. Juris Doctor, University of Miami School of Law. Based in St. Pete. I work with businesses across Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater and the rest of the bay. Trademarks nationwide under federal law; business contracts in Florida.
You can include it, but a place name describes where you are, so it won’t be what protects you. The Florida Avenue Eats fight turned on exactly that. The rest of the name has to do the work, and the search shows how crowded it is.
No. Florida says fictitious name registration is for public notice only, gives no presumption of rights to the name and doesn’t reserve it against anyone else. Sunbiz FAQ (opens in a new tab)
Yes. Citrus Legal is based in St. Pete, and I’m a Florida attorney. Federal trademarks are national, but it helps to work with someone who knows the businesses and the neighborhoods here.
$2,600 flat for one mark at Citrus Legal: the search, the written opinion, the application and procedural Office Actions through registration. Plus the USPTO’s $350 fee per class. Two marks are $4,950 and three are $7,300.
An LLC registers your company with the State of Florida. It doesn’t give you rights in the name as a brand. A federal trademark registration does, nationwide.
Questions by email are always free. If you want to talk through your situation live, you can book a paid 30-minute consultation.
Start here, or email us first. Either one gets you a straight answer about what to do next.
Email questions are free. Want to talk it through? Book a paid 30-minute consultation. (opens in a new tab)