The registered trademark symbol, , is a
typographic symbol
Typographical symbols and punctuation marks are marks and symbols used in typography with a variety of purposes such as to help with legibility and accessibility, or to identify special cases. This list gives those most commonly encountered with ...
that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol 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 ...
or
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 ...
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 gove ...
, , while unregistered service marks are marked with 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 ...
, . 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, wh ...
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 Lanham (Trademark) Act (, codified at et seq. () is the primary federal statute governing trademark law in the United States.
The Lanham Act establishes a national system of trademark registration and grants owners of federally register ...
.
Because the symbol is not commonly available on
typewriter
A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...
s (or
ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
), it was common to approximate it with "" or "" It is also legal in the US to use the text "Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office" or "Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off."
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 computing, 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character (computing), character sets—Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character enc ...
from which it was inherited by
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 ...
as .
[ ]
See also
* 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 gove ...
, , 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
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 ...
, , used for unregistered
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 ...
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 Conv ...
,
* The
sound recording copyright symbol
The sound recording copyright symbol or phonogram symbol, (letter P in a circle), is the copyright symbol used to provide notice of copyright in a sound recording (phonogram) embodied in a phonorecord ( LPs, audiotapes, cassette tapes, compac ...
,
* The
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 f ...
hechsher
A hechsher or hekhsher (; "prior approval"; plural: ''hechsherim'') is a rabbinical product certification, qualifying items (usually foods) that conform to the requirements of halakha, Jewish religious law.
Forms
A hechsher may be a printed an ...
symbol,
* symbol, , is used in
Quebec
Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
.
*
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, , used in Canada also has an to indicate that a name or design used by Canadian public authorities is protected.
* grapheme, , used in some German publications, especially dictionaries, as informative and independent of the actual protection status of the name.
Notes
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Registered Trademark Symbol
Trademark law
Typographical symbols