A trademark provides legal protection for a word, symbol, phrase, logo, design, or combination of those that represent a source of goods or services. A trademark can be any word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination of these elements that identify your products or services. It's how customers recognize you in the market and distinguish you from your competitors. A trademark is a sign capable of distinguishing the goods or services of a company from those of other companies.
Trademarks are protected by intellectual property rights.
Trademarks
can be of several types; service marks, collective marks, certification marks, etc. Whatever the type of trademark, the purpose of the trademark is the same; distinguish the source of the products or services and guarantee consumers the quality of the product or service. A trademark of caramel-coated apples could be used against competitors offering caramel-coated apples, which greatly limits competition.Extravagant, arbitrary and suggestive trademarks are the strongest types of brands and are entitled to the greatest protection. As your business grows and expands online, you may want more protection for your brand and decide to apply for federal registration. A step below arbitrary, extravagant and suggestive brands are designed to stimulate the consumer's imagination and assign a particular characteristic to the product. In a nutshell, a trademark may include a device, brand, header, label, ticket, name, signature, word, letter, number, shape of products, packaging, or combination of colors, or any of those combinations.
A common mistake is to think that having a trademark means that you are the legal owner of a particular word or phrase and can prevent others from using it. The strongest trademarks are those that are not related in any way to the products in which they are used. The Madrid system for international trademark registration provides a single procedure for registering a trademark in several territories. You can only use the trademark registration symbol for products or services that are listed in the federal trademark register.
Quirky trademarks are often terms coined specifically for the purpose of creating a trademark, such as Kodak. An exception can be granted if the brand is no longer associated with a particular product and is associated with the company that produces the product. A company may have a particular trade name and manufacture a variety of products, each with different trademarks. You can use the registration symbol anywhere around the trademark, although most trademark owners use the superscript or subscript symbol to the right of the trademark.
