Trademarks
Trademarks are symbols, pictures, marks, words or other characteristics that companies use to identify their products and services and distinguish them from others. We see trademarks everyday on the products we buy. Usually they have a TM or ® beside them. Trademarks cannot be generic terms. For example, if a company sells rice, they cannot simply call their product “Rice” because it doesn’t establish a difference between their product and the rice produced by other companies.
Trademark rights arise from the use and/or registration of the trademark. In British/American law, if a company commonly uses a trademark in the market, other companies are expected to refrain (stop themselves) from using that mark. A company can also register their trademark in a trademarks office/registry.
Trademark law gives the holders of a trademark the right to exclusive use of that mark. If another company uses that trademark, they have infringed on the trademark rights. There have been many famous cases of trademark infringement over the years, such as the ongoing battle between Lacoste and Crocodile International throughout Asia. A good example of a clear case of trademark infringement involved Starbucks and a competitor in China – see the China Law Blog for a description of the case. Trademark Law is an ever-growing area of IP Law – I even found a blog entirely about trademarks here.
Common collocations for “trademark”
trademark rights
trademark infringement
register a trademark
a registered trademark
trademark use
i just have a question ,why do not push new course about chinese version .i am waiting for this long time .
Comment by david pan — September 27, 2006 @ 3:51 am
Hi David,
The Chinese version of the website has General English lessons. We have decided to focus on Business English lessons only for the next few months. However, we may add an option for Chinese users to change the tabs, titles and instructions from English to Chinese so they can use the website more easily. When we do this we’ll probably also try a few other languages as well.
Best Regards,
Comment by Kris/Team EnglishPod — September 28, 2006 @ 12:07 am
Thanks,
It was great reading your article about the trademark, I was really confused and not having a perfect concept of what it actually is, I have read some other articles specially the articles given here about trademarks, http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/navigation/tm.html
I loved the way it was written, the articles were fresh and professionally written.
Good Luck!
Comment by Addies — October 11, 2006 @ 7:58 pm
Hi Addies,
Thanks, great link. The Small Business Bible is a great website (except for all the ads). There are tons of good articles on their website, as well as blogs about business.
Comment by Kris — October 13, 2006 @ 7:58 am
Great Content.
I have read these articles.
Basis of Your Small Businesses
http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/navigation/ssb-bsb.html
Administring Your Small Business
http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/navigation/ssb-asb.html
Financing Your Small Business
http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/navigation/ssb-fsb.html
Sales Management and Marketing Your Small Business
http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/navigation/ssb-smmsb.html
Running a Successful Small Business
http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/navigation/ssb-rssb.html
Small Business E-Commerce
http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/navigation/ssb-sbec.html
Comment by John — November 8, 2006 @ 3:40 am