I’m editing and rewriting a narrative for an organization that offers a program with a trademarked name. Let’s call it “Mojo’s Digging for Dollars Program.” The narrative I’m looking at puts the registered trademark symbol (superscript R in a circle–not sure how to put it on this board…) after EVERY instance of the name and EVERY instance of the abbreviation of the name, i.e. MDFDP <registered trademark>.
Is this necessary? It looks cluttered, overzealous, distracting, and ridiculous. Can’t I just use it once when the name first appears?
I don’t plan to use the acronym/abbreviation at all-- I’m just going to write out the name every time. I think people reading these proposals shouldn’t have to care or remember what your organization’s particular acronym stands for, and I want to make it as easy as possible for them. Hell, I want to slam down the piece after the 15th iteration of MDFDP <registered trademark>, and I *like *this organization.
This is not part of style in the normal sense. The user is the determiner.
There is no legal necessity to use the symbol every single time in a document. Using it once gives proper notice. However, some users prefer to mark every single case.
It’s their decision. But since it is a choice, why not just ask them which choice they prefer?
They’ve given it to me to improve it. In past narratives, they HAVE used it every single time. If it’s not a grammatical/usage rule, I’ll take your advice and just use it once.
Hold down the ALT key and type the numbers on the numeric keypad (NOT the ones above the letters). And you MUST always type the leading zero. Google ‘alt codes’…
If their IP lawyer has told them that they need to use it everytime, don’t second guess them. And don’t let free advice from strangers on the internet overrule what they pay their lawyers for.
I think that also happens because they just define a macro in their word processor document that produces the name or phrase or whatever, including the ® symbol, and use that macro throughout the document, so the ® appears every time.
There’s no legal requirement to use the registered trade mark symbol at all.
If you wish to draw attention to the fact that the word “splot” is a registered trade mark, you can use the symbol the first time, or every time, it appears in your text - that’s up to you. Or you could just stick in “(‘Splot’ is a registered trade mark of the Splot Corporation Inc)” whenever you mention the word.
But this particular item of information is pertinent to the narrative you are writing, why mention it at all? The Famous Five drank plenty of milky tea out of thermos flasks without ever feeling the need for a ®.
If you or I are writing about the product, then we are under no obligation at all to use any marks.
That’s not the case here. The company itself is doing the writing (or farming it to ghosts, same thing). It wants to ensure that the marks are used and seen. That is not legally required, but their absence makes it much more difficult to defend against a suit.
The company decides. Seems to me that the company had decided; the originating document used the marks every time. Since I don’t know what the document was or who the intended readership was, I can’t say whether that is the best practice for that particular document. Using marks the first time for each marked product would be mandatory in my eyes, however.
The only time I would bother with this “every single mention” approach is when writing a press release or other document that is likely to be excerpted by third parties. But it’s not my field.
