trademark TM use with logo
Out of context: Reply #12
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- ukit0
haha. It's a good question, only thing I could find was this
http://www.smithsholar.com/singl…
CONSEQUENCES OF NON-USE OR MISUSE OF TRADEMARK SYMBOLS - PART II
"Because there are federal statutes governing the use of trademark symbols, it follows that there are consequences of non-use and/or misuse of those symbols.
The greatest consequence comes with non-use of the trademark symbol ® after obtaining a federal trademark registration. A trademark owner may be denied money damages if they have not put the infringer on actual notice of their trademark. A trademark owner may still receive an injunction, but could be denied money damages. Placing the trademark symbol by the trademark automatically puts an infringer on notice of the federal trademark registration.
Furthermore, using a federal trademark symbol beside a trademark that does not have a federal trademark registration could constitute fraud. Courts, however, have become very lenient on this matter and accept a wide variety of explanations for the misuse. However, if the intent was to deceive the public, then it could be viewed as false advertising and fraud. "
So basically, in practice probably nothing will happen for illegally using ® if you are some small business somewhere. If you are Google or Yahoo it would be a bad idea because theoretically you could be sued for fraud.
I think this makes the case for adding it to the logo though. What I was trying to say earlier is that the product service, logo and name could all be different trademarks - although it seems like it's possible to trademark these things together also and that's what companies usually do. So if you used the ™ or ® in text only you could be implying that you trademarked the name, but not the actual logo. Then when someone ripped your site/logo, you wouldn't have as strong of a case.
- but you could sue them on copyright or trade dress infringement for the logo.ribit