[phillian]

I work as an IP paralegal by day (when not fiendishly working on my own coding projects at night).

My one recommendation is that if you are cost conscious, send your IP projects (copyright, patent, trademark) to a boutique or, as we call them, a 'mill'. Having worked in both boutique and large conglomerate firm settings, I can attest to the fact boutiques are far more organized and, because their overhead is so much less, far less expensive.

W/r/t at what point in your development cycle you should register the TM, I have seen the spectrum of very early to very late filings. While in one instance a late-stage filing resulted in more similar marks out there (and the class claims for goods/ services had to be much more limited) I have not yet seen it be detrimental to getting registered eventually.

On the other hand, small start-ups (both net based and brick-and-mortar) account for a disproporionate number of the applications we have to let go abandoned due to client request or nonpayment.