Trademark

A trademark is a word, image, sign, symbol, or combination of these that identifies products and services, pointing to their origin or ownership. Since the legal right to use a trademark is reserved to its registered owner, the trademark serves as a legally protected guarantee of authenticity.

Trademarks announce that products and services come from one organization rather than another. Business firms, public-sector agencies, and non-profit organizations use them, as do universities and professional associations. Along with tangible products and services, trademarks identify the information products and virtual services of the knowledge economy. As ownership marks, they protect communications and property.

Trademarks are a central feature of contemporary life. They appear in every forum and medium, on every kind of object and artifact. A walk though any kind of shop or store reveals thousands of trademarked products, multiplied by the number of items in stock for several hundred thousand trademark impressions. While trademarks are present everywhere and all the time, they are so completely integrated into daily experience that most people hardly notice them.

The general trademark concept is simple. The industrial revolution made manufactured goods a common feature of daily life, and trademarks emerged to identify them.

Different marks have long been used to indicate identity, ownership, or origin. Ownership marks have been used for more than 5,000 years to identify animals in the fields and at market. The act of branding livestock gave us the term “brand” to describe trademarked products or services. Other forms of identity mark include heraldry and monograms.

Origination marks declared the origin of goods. These included ceramic marks, stonemasons' marks, hallmarks, printers' marks, watermarks, gold- and silversmith marks, and furniture marks. The first true trademarks were stamped into the mass-manufactured oil lamps of the Roman Empire.

In legal terms, a trademark is a mark used by a legal person to identify goods offered to the public, distinguishing them from goods offered by other persons. Goods include services as well as products. A person in legal terms may be an individual, a corporation, a non-profit corporation, a government, a government agency, an unincorporated association, or any legal or commercial entity. In every case, the trademark is used to distinguish goods from those offered by another legal entity.

There are many kinds of trademarks. Most are words, names, symbols, or some combination of these in a specific form. The name Coca-Cola written in its characteristic script, the distinct word Coke, and the special bottle shape are the world's best-known trademarks. Others include the stylized IBM letters, the Nike swoosh, and the rainbow Apple with a bite missing.

Service marks identify services. McDonald's Golden Arches, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, the http://Amazon.com logo, and the Merrill Lynch bull are service marks.

Certification marks guarantee geographic origin, material, quality, accuracy, or other characteristics. The controlled names of French wines, the Woolmark, guildhall marks for metals, and national manufacturing marks are certification marks. So are the TM and SM marks that protect trademarks and service marks.

The information economy has given rise to many new forms of trademark. Animated marks and domain names are common on the Web. Architectural trademarks such as the mansard roof identify Pizza Hut locations, and sound marks identify radio stations. One of the great business cases of the past half-century is the construction of the Absolut Vodka brand, a product built around the trademarked shape of the Absolut bottle.

...