I’m currently writing a document about Web standards, that will be used as a collateral give-away by my company. Some of the standards are proprietary - e.g. MS Passport. Does anyone know what the legality is of mentioning other companies’ trade names? Do I have to use the ® or ™ with them as used by the company who owns the trademark? Is there a standard disclaimer I can put on the document to excuse this?
Thanks for your help.
Can’t say anything about the legal aspects, but usually in product manuals I see a single line somewhere on the copyright page or thereabouts that states that all trademarks are property of the respective owners.
For example, I can’t think of a single Windows book that had the TM signal written everywhere throughout. On the other hand there’s always been some contention about that particular word being trademarked, so it may be a bad example.
Legally, you can mention trade names as much as you want, as long as they’re capitalized and not used in a way as to imply they’re a generic term: “MS Passport” is perfectly fine when talking about the product made by Microsoft.
However, there is a convention in the computer industry to put the trademark sign after the trade name:
MS Passport™
You only need to do this the first time it appears; later uses can leave it out.
Also, there’s usually an acknowledgement that lists the trade names and who own the trademark:
MS Passport™ is a trademark of Microsoft, Inc.
These latters are not legally required, but most people do use them.
Thanks all!
I just checked our style guide and found the following:
Since the collateral will be distributed in several countries, I think I will use them just to be safe. Cheers.