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Subject:A little learning ... on trademarks From:"D. Margulis" <ampersandvirgule -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET> Date:Thu, 25 Jun 1998 18:52:24 -0400
Hi gang,
I'm working for a startup, meaning it is small and everyone talks to
each other. So today I actually got to spend about ten minutes with the
corporate attorney going over the finer points of trademarks.
Well, that isn't really true. We didn't get into the adjective vs. noun
thing. But he was very enlightening regarding the question of when and
where to display the "TM" superscript.
Some points that may be of general interest:
As most of you know, you start using TM from day one, then file with the
Patent Office for registration, and when the Patent Office issues your
registration--right now, the backlog is about a year--you begin using
the circle-R. (Yeah, I know the ascii characters, but they're barely
legible in my email reader.)
You may have observed that big, well-known companies do not mark every
single instance of their trademarks. Look on the front of your computer
or printer, for example. The legal principle here is that they are
already so well known, and the companies have already spent so much time
and money making them well known, that they have strong ownership of
their brand identity franchises and no one could possibly be unaware of
them.
Small companies and startup companies are in the opposite situation,
though. No one has heard of us yet. Therefore, it behooves us to slap
that puppy all over the place--on every page of a web site, on business
cards and stationery, on application screens--anyplace a name or image
appears that we might ever want to protect.
The attorney acknowledged that this is graphically distracting; but the
value of brand identity to the company is worth a whole lot more than
making a designer happy. (I wasn't arguing the point. I happen to
agree.)
In past discussions of this subject on the list, there has been a
question of what is appropriate in this regard; and people who work for
large companies have sometimes responded differently than people who
work for small companies (differently than? that doesn't sound right.
But it's been a long day.) I think this explains the reason behind that.
