Anybody have a good handle on the difference between a “trademark” ™, a “registered trademark” (the circle with the “R” inside), and a “servicemark” (sm)?
From the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/tmfaq.htm:
What is a trademark?
A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.
What is a service mark?
A service mark is any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce, to identify and distinguish the services of one provider from services provided by others, and to indicate the source of the services.
Do I need to register my trademark?
No. However, federal registration has several advantages including notice to the public of the registrant’s claim of ownership of the mark, a legal presumption of ownership nationwide, and the exclusive right to use the mark on or in connection with the goods or services set forth in the registration.
What are the benefits of federal trademark registration?
- Constructive notice nationwide of the trademark owner’s claim.
- Evidence of ownership of the trademark.
- Jurisdiction of federal courts may be invoked.
- Registration can be used as a basis for obtaining registration in foreign countries.
- Registration may be filed with U.S. Customs Service to prevent importation of infringing foreign goods.
- When Chinese factories illegally make knockoffs of your registered product, the state department will make stern noises at them.
So what does a © (circle c) next to a product name mean?
The © is a copywrite symbol. It is not used on product names, it is used to mark original works, books, stories, movies, etc.
That’s ‘copyright’, dammit, ‘the right to copy’.
Sorry, Omni, but I’ve seen that other thing at least three times in the last week or so (besides all the posts here), and you just got in the line of fire. 
Which way to the Pit?
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
I wasn’t sure about that, i typed it, looked at it, changed it, thought that looked more correct than your version, and changed it back, but was just too damn lazy to check. Oh well, more ammo for the pit.
Unlike the trademark ® , you don’t have to do anything to put a © on your creation. It doesn’t even signify registration. It just signifies that you have the copyright on whatever you created.
If you have a sound recording, you use a p in a circle, which I don’t seem to have in my character set.
p, c, r, tm, sm, pat, …
Can’t we just have one mark that means ‘don’t reproduce this or even think of making money off of it because it belongs to me’? Next thing you know we’ll have to use a Greek psi surrounded by an aura to designate exclusively owned good vibrations.
Peace.
I think the aura would fall into the same category as the p within a circle. P is for a creative work that, in a sense, can’t be held in your hands. You can’t hold on to the sound from a recording of “Revolution.” You can hold on to the CD, but not the sound. At least that’s the way the US Copyright Office looks at it.
I suggest you take your observations to the World Intellectual Property Organization, better known as WIPO. Perhaps we can get some sort of international agreement on aura protection.
A few thoughts…
First, to your question: (USA specific) a trademark need not be registered, but can be. The TM you see following brand or firm names is the unregistered assertion that the mark is their trademark. Anyone can use that without any interaction with the government, as is the case with the © symbol for assertion of copyright.
When you see the ®, the proprietor has (or claims to have) registered the trademark. I’m currently 10 mos. into registering a trademark and have reached the third lap, with the receipt of my notice of publication for opposition (dated 8/27/99). This means that my trademark submission has cleared all other hurdles and will be published in the US Patent and Trademark Office’s official gazette and if no opposition is formally filed within 30 days, about 90 days later I will be notified that I’m the registered owner of the trademark. From tracking its progress as well as others at subsites you can find from www.uspto.gov , I’ve gathered it typically takes 12 to 15 months to get a TM registered.
What spurred us after a decade was the realization that another company had contracted their name to come up with their web domain name and came up with our name. As a result, our domain name is xxxxxxxxx.net instead of .com (hmmm, I think I’m cross pollinating threads here).
Interesting things I’ve learned during the process include:
- Each form of your trademark requires a separate registration ($249, IIRC); i.e., a black & white version and a color version require different registration
- You must register for each product or service you intend to include under your trademark protection; too many cannot fit under one registration
- While the above sound like an invitation to poor money into the USPTO, they consider the circumstances; i.e., there can be an ACME Handtools TM and an ACME Donuts TM, but, if already registered, ACME Donuts would probably prevail in opposition to ACME Bakeries; so, I’ve only registered the b&w version of our TM, but it is very industry oriented, so they’re unlikely to allow another of the same name to register even a dissimilar TM with the same name
- Our company is commonly reduced to a 3-letter acronym in contracts which caused me to consider the TM’ed 3-letter acronyms (3LA) you see. If you search the USPTO database, you’ll see that many companies have registered the same 3LA - what you register is a representation. If you register ABC as a TM and subsequently change the typeface from that which you used to generate the samples sent with your registration application, what you’re then using is not a registered TM.
A little example of how the last point seems to work - one company in my business registered (a few) version of their 3LA. Another company in the very same business began using the same (logical contraction of their own name) 3LA on literature, ads, etc. The first company sued and prevailed, although if I check out that 3LA in the USPTO database, there are quite a few registered owners, all in recognizably different lines of business.
Second,…well I was going to address some of the developing tangential stuff regarding copyrights, but I’ve reached my limit for a single thread reply tonight. If the thread lives on, maybe tomorrow night. But I will recommend a good overview of copyright law for the layman: This Business of Music by Sidney Shemel and M. William Krasilovsky.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Note to beatle:
Proofreading is most effective prior to pressing the Submit Reply button(sigh).
OK, I’m not the only “dribble poster” around here, although I try to avoid it.
While I could babble on, I won’t; a significant point I failed to include above is that you must claim involvement in interstate commerce to successfully register a federal trademark.
You can just apply for a state trademark. If you want to be a real stickler, you can apply for a trademark in all 50 states and then Federally. If you want to be like DreamWorks, you can go register your trademarks in just about every country imaginable.
And they did.
So in essence, The Straight Dope ®, as you’ll notice above, is a registered trademark, Cecil or Tubadiva or somebody could claim SDMB ™ as an unregistered trademark in that it’s the standard abbreviation for a registered trademark, and Cecil or The Chicago Reader ™ holds a copyright on Cecil’s columns.
I’m trying to follow the idea of a service mark. If Cecil were to claim the phrase “THE right answer” as a part of his business, he could register it as his service mark? Is that the idea?
Does Cecil sell a service called “The Right Answer” and does he do it interstate? Then it would be a service mark.
What is the service? Answering questions?
A couple of years ago, we discovered that another company was doing business under the same name as our company, so my boss decided that we needed to register our company’s name (as a service mark). We’d been in business longer, and the other company hadn’t tried to register the name, so that wasn’t an issue, and we did eventually get a registered service mark.
However, the USPTO bounced back our original application because it tried to register [Name of Company], Inc., as a service mark. They said we couldn’t include the “Inc.” in our registered SM. Seems like hairsplitting to me, although I guess the gummint likes to do that.
The Cat In The Hat
The issue surrounding the use of “Inc.” comes up daily, probably hourly, at the USPTO and is not going to derail any registration. You simply amend your application with the qualifier “No claim is made to the exclusive right to use ‘Inc.’ apart from the mark as shown.”
Yeah, I think that’s what we ended up doing, beatle. At any rate, we got our SM in the end, and my boss sent a letter to the other company telling them to cease & desist (I love that phrase!) using our name, and they did.
The Cat In The Hat
Anyone know how much it costs to get a trademark in the USA? Is it expensive? If someone has a logo that they use but don’t have a TM for it & you get a TM for one like it, can you keep them from using theirs?