The registered trademark symbol, , is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from ot ...

service mark A service mark or servicemark is a trademark used in the United States and several other countries to identify a service rather than a product. When a service mark is federally registered, the standard registration symbol ® or "Reg U.S ...

that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company, product or service.For example, Unregistered trademarks can instead be marked with the

trademark symbol The trademark symbol is a symbol to indicate that the preceding mark is a trademark, specifically an unregistered trademark. It complements the registered trademark symbol which is reserved for trademarks registered with an appropriate g ...

, , while unregistered service marks are marked with the

service mark symbol The service mark symbol (the letters in small capitals and superscript style), is a symbol used in the United States and some other jurisdictions to provide notice that the preceding mark is a service mark. This symbol may be used for servi ...

, . The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark; the symbol is commonly in

superscript A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, whil ...

style, but that is not legally required. In many jurisdictions, only registered trademarks confer easily defended legal rights. In the US, the registered trademark symbol was originally introduced in the Trademark Act of 1946.The Online Etymology Dictionary
/ref> Because the symbol is not commonly available on

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

s (or

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

), it was common to approximate it with the characters (or ). An example of a legal equivalent is the phrase ''Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office'', which may be abbreviated to ''Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off.'' in the US.

Computer usage

The registered trademark character was added to several

extended ASCII Extended ASCII is a repertoire of character encodings that include (most of) the original 96 ASCII character set, plus up to 128 additional characters. There is no formal definition of "extended ASCII", and even use of the term is sometimes critic ...

character sets, including

ISO-8859-1 ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in ...

from which it was inherited by

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

as . This is a different character from as many fonts draw the registered trademark symbol smaller and possibly superscripted.

Typing the character

* Canadian Multilingual Standard (

CSA keyboard The CSA keyboard, or CAN/CSA Z243.200-92, is the official keyboard layout of Canada. Often referred to as ACNOR, it is best known for its use in the Canadian computer industry for the French ACNOR keyboard layout, published as CAN/CSA Z243.200- ...

): * US international keyboard and UK extended keyboard layouts: (subject to OS support). *

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

: (on numeric keypad) * Mac OS: *

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

: * Linux and ChromeOS: then *

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

: or *

Emacs Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, ...

: *

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

: \textregistered in text mode. \circledR in text or math mode (requires amsfonts package)

Related and similar symbols

* The

, ™, used for

unregistered trademark An unregistered trademark or common law trademark is an enforceable mark created by a business or individual to signify or distinguish a product or service. It is legally different from a registered trademark granted by statute. As with registere ...

s * The

, ℠, used for unregistered

s * The

copyright symbol The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, (a circled capital letter C for copyright), is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings. 17 U.S.C. The use of the symbol is described by the Universal Copyright Co ...

Orthodox Union The Orthodox Union (abbreviated OU) is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the United States. Founded in 1898, the OU supports a network of synagogues, youth programs, Jewish and Religious Zionist advocacy programs, programs fo ...

hechsher symbol, Ⓤ

Notes

References

External links

The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
{{DEFAULTSORT:Registered Trademark Symbol Trademark law Typographical symbols