Fox just aired a commercial for their airing of “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” At the very end of the commercial, I noticed they rendered the title as austin powers®. Notice the little ® symbol at the end. If I am correct, it means that AP is a registered trademark. But I’ve never seen anyone ever place a symbol after a title of a movie on a television network commercial. Not for Star Wars®. Not for Star Trek® on UPN. I know 20th Century produced the movie, so is Fox placing this icon on their own movies just for vanity, or are all the other networks breaking some rule with their ‘®’-free references?
Actually, Austin Powers® was not produced by 20th Century Fox®, but by New Line Cinema®.
As for why the small ® is there, I don’t know®.
Ryan W. Mead®
Just my WAG, but maybe they didn’t trademark the name of the movie, they might have trademarked the name of the character.
You can’t trademark titles. I could make a movie called Austin Powers or a song named Yesterday…as long as they aren’t the same thing.
I seem to recall having seen the trademark logo right after Billy Joel’s name on some of his later recordings. Can someone confirm this?
I remember the Indigo Girls had problems when they first hit the scene, with some other group saying they were the IG. So the real IG trademarked the name and sued anyone who subsequently used it.
On http://www.STARTREK.COM , they used to have little TM after all their character names except for “The Doctor”, which is too generic for a trademark, IIRC. (I joked to someone that they had trademarked the letter “Q”, too, and that “Sesame Street” might get in trouble the next time “Q” sponsors an episode. 
)
But now there are no TM symbols on their site. They probably have a general TM claim on all characters listed on the site.
There’s two "Rachel Green"s (actually Green and Greene) on NBC shows “Friends” and “ER”. I don’t think they’re produced by the same company, but I also don’t think they had a problem with the dupicate names.
Billy Joel has lost millions of dollars over the course of his career due to bad experiences with a promoter and his former brother-in-law/manager. See this article on Turnstiles, which many BJ fans consider the best fan site, for more info on why he trademarked his name.
There you go:). Thanks Scarlett!