When should we consider getting ®, when ™, and when both? Please help explain to a five year old entrepreneur from India.
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They represent copyright and trademark, they are different concepts, copyright is to protect original work, and trade mark is to protect from imitations.
Both indicate that the business considers them Trademarks. The R symbol means that the Trademark has been registered with the US Trademark office. Registration is not required for protection, it is helpful though.
Use ™ to indicate a trademark, like the name of your business or the name of a product. It helps people to understand that it’s not a generic term and they shouldn’t copy it.
To get legal protection you need to register your trademark. You need to do this in every country where you want trademark protection. In the U.S. you pay a small fee (a few hundred dollars) and pick a category (like software, clothing, etc.) and then many months later if there are no objections you get it approved. Then you can start using ®.
In the U.S. at least, you cannot register your trademark until AFTER you start actually using your business name. So if you’re just starting out a business, don’t worry about this yet. Find a good name that’s not too generic and that you’re pretty confident nobody else is using, then buy the domain names and start selling things under that name. Use ™ if you want.
Then, after you’ve started using it, register the trademark in countries where you do business. Then if successful use ®.
This is for the US only.® is for a registered trademark this means that the generally word or phrase but sometimes short video is registered with an appropriate government agency. This is to try prevent people using it to misrepresent who/where something came from. Registering gives several advantages over unregistered but can cost time and money which means until a certain size or importance someone may skip registering. One of biggest advantages is that this covers the trademark nationwide.
This brings us to ™ which is for an unregistered trademark which is not registered but is still considered by the issuer to be a mark that identifies a source of origin. Nothing special needs to be done to to acquire this beyond just using the identifying mark on a regular basis. However the geographical area this can cover can vary widely.
Some examples for ® are commonly used for company names and product names like google, chrome, and the chrome logo. ™ is generally used by smaller companies where the cost of registering is not worth it like a small local shop with a name like “Bob’s discount wear”. In the ™ case since its not registered it would usually mean someone in the same town probably couldn’t use the same name but another shop a city or 2 away might have the same name.
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