Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, ™ or ® is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to uniquely identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to distinguish the business and its products or services from those of other businesses. A trademark is a type of industrial property which is distinct from other forms of intellectual property.

Conventionally, a trademark comprises a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. There is also a range of non-conventional trademarks comprising marks which do not fall into these standard categories.

Registrable trademarks

Not all marks can function as trademarks and there are certain restrictions on the extent to which exclusive rights can be established or maintained in relation to trademarks. For example, marks which identify or describe a product or service, or which are in common use, or which are used as geographical indicators, must remain available for use to anyone. For this reason, a generic term such as ‘apple’ or descriptive terms such as ‘red’ or ‘juicy’ generally could not be registered in relation to apples.



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Note added at 1 hr (2006-11-10 14:13:47 GMT)
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http://www.sba.gov/hotlist/tmdef.html