The trademark symbol is a

symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...

to indicate that the preceding mark is a

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

, specifically an

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 ...

. It complements the

registered trademark symbol The registered trademark symbol, , is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or wor ...

which is reserved for trademarks registered with an appropriate government agency. In Canada, an equivalent symbol, () is used in French. Canada also has an

official mark An official mark (sometimes denoted by the symbols OM, M, or Ⓜ) is a form of intellectual property which exists in Canada under section 9 of the Trade-marks Act, which allows for the protection of names and designs used by Canadian public authori ...

symbol, , to indicate that a name or design used by Canadian public authorities is protected. Some German publications, especially dictionaries, also use a grapheme, (), which is informative and independent of the actual protection status of the name.

Use

Use of the trademark symbol indicates an assertion that a word, image, or other sign is a trademark; it does not indicate registration or impart enhanced protections. Registered trademarks are indicated using the

, , and in many jurisdictions it is unlawful or illegal to use the registered trademark symbol with a mark that has not been registered. The

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

, , is used to indicate the assertion of a

service mark A service mark or servicemark is a trademark used in the United States and several other countries to identify a Service (economics), service rather than a product (business), product. When a service mark is federally registered, the standard ...

(a trademark for the provision of services). The service mark symbol is less commonly used than the trademark sign, especially outside the United States. On

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

, the trademark symbol has seen use in an

ironic Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what, on the surface, appears to be the case with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has a ...

fashion, highlighting a concept as if it were important enough to warrant its own trademark, for example, "Official Bisexual Haircut™". This is a non-standard usage of the symbol, which confers no special legal rights.

Non-standard substitutions

The letters and are sometimes seen paired in an attempt to emulate the trademark symbol. Methods include * , the letters in normal form, enclosed in parentheses * , the letters written in

small caps In typography, small caps (short for small capitals) are grapheme, characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. Small caps are used i ...

, on the baseline * , the letters written as

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, wh ...

s, as in mathematical

exponentiation In mathematics, exponentiation, denoted , is an operation (mathematics), operation involving two numbers: the ''base'', , and the ''exponent'' or ''power'', . When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to repeated multiplication ...

* , using symbols from the

Phonetic Extensions Phonetic Extensions is a Unicode block containing phonetic characters used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Old Irish phonetic notation, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and American dictionaries, and Americanist and Russianist phonetic notat ...

block in

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

References

{{navbox punctuation United States trademark law Punctuation Typographical symbols

Use

Non-standard substitutions

See also

References