Registered Trademark TM

Strategies for the use of registered trademarks How to mark and use registered trademarks? Someone said: "Do we still need to consider this issue? Just put the registered trademark on the product or packaging and add a circled R after it." In fact, it is not that simple. Let's take a look at the newspaper first. On the 15th page of "21st Century Business Herald" published on December 13, 2004, a full-page advertisement for the merger of "Lenovo" and "IBM" was published. Careful people will find that there is a "Lenovo" and "IBM" below. There is a small circled R, and there is a line of very small words at the bottom of the newspaper: "The IBM logo and Thinkpad are registered trademarks of IBM in the United States and other countries." However, Lenovo has no such label or text expression. Lenovo is a very outstanding company in China, but its awareness of the use of registered trademarks is still very immature in front of international companies like IBM, let alone other domestic companies. Our country's laws have regulations on the marking of registered trademarks. Article 26 of the "Implementation Rules of the Trademark Law" (hereinafter referred to as the "Four Implementation Rules") revised in 1999: "The use of a registered trademark shall be marked with the words "registered trademark" or If it is inconvenient to mark the registration mark (note) on the goods, it shall be marked on the product packaging or instructions and other attachments. "Article 37 of the "Implementation Rules" revised in 2002: "Registered trademarks can be used. Mark "registered trademark" or registered mark on the product, product packaging, instructions or other attachments. The registered mark includes "?". The registered mark should be marked on the upper right corner or lower right corner of the trademark. "We can do this in two ways. Let’s analyze the above regulations: 1. Should a registered trademark be marked? The provisions of the “Implementing Rules” revised in 1999 seem to be somewhat mandatory, and the original intention is that if you are a registered trademark, you must make it clear to the public. As for where it can be marked as unrestricted, it can be on the product, on the packaging, in the manual, or elsewhere. The "Implementation Rules" revised in 2002 changed "should" to "may" as to whether it should be marked. It is no longer mandatory to mark. The specific implementation should be based on the new regulations. In other words, the use of registered trademarks does not need to be marked. 2. How to mark registered trademarks. According to the revised "Implementation Rules", there are only three ways to mark a registered trademark, which is to add: A. four Chinese characters for "registered trademark", B. the word "note", and a circle outside the word note. , C, "R", add a circle outside R. Any other labeling methods are inconsistent with legal requirements. Note is a Chinese character, which is obviously not as popular around the world as using ?, so we recommend that it is best to use ? annotation. The most common way to mark various product trademarks is to mark the circled R in the upper right corner of the registered trademark. A few products will be marked with ? in the lower right corner of the registered trademark. It is rare to use the word "zhu", and some products place the registration and trademark on both sides of the registered trademark. Where exactly a registered trademark should be marked, the "Implementing Rules" revised in 2002 also stipulates that it should be marked in the upper right corner or lower right corner of the trademark. We have also seen a well-known foreign beverage brand only mark the word "trademark" after the registered trademark, which is against legal standards. Our country's laws do not have any penalties for irregular labeling, but labeling should still be carried out in accordance with legal provisions. We can see that there are many businesses in China that mark "TM" on their own initiative. Some companies have applied to the National Trademark Office to express TM as a trademark, but have not yet obtained registration. "TM" is the English abbreviation of a registered trademark. Regardless of the regulations of other countries, our country's "Trademark Law" does not recognize TM. The mark "TM" does not mean anything in our country. Learn the labeling methods of foreign companies. Comparing domestic and foreign products, you will find that the trademarks on foreign product packaging are much more eye-catching than domestic ones.

People who love to drink Coca-Cola must be deeply impressed by the packaging of Coca-Cola. The wavy streamer patterns of "coca-cola" in English and "Coca-Cola" in Chinese are particularly eye-catching, occupying nearly three-quarters of the packaging logo. These three All are trademarks of the Coca-Cola Company. Their trademarks have a great impact on people. The first thing that catches the eye is their trademark. We can look for the packaging of famous domestic brands for comparison. Domestic enterprise product packaging logos are also carefully designed and very beautiful, but it takes a lot of effort to find the circled R, which is small and curled up in a corner. It feels like domestic companies are just complying with legal regulations and just mark it in any place. I once participated in a training by the American Borland Company. From its brochures to samples, the company's logo with a circle of R and TM is everywhere, and there are at least 9 circled R's and TM's on a demo CD. R and TM. Foreign companies seem to be afraid that others will not know it. On packaging, products, and brochures, wherever their company's registered trademark appears, a circled R closely follows it. Let’s compare the two best-selling anti-virus software in China. We carefully searched the product packaging and product CDs, but we still can’t see the shadow of “?” or “registered trademark”. We are not even sure whether the software has a registered trademark. Microsoft has grown into such a giant in just a few decades, and there is so much to learn from it. Let’s take a closer look at how Microsoft marks its trademarks. Microsoft's registered trademark, the circled R, is also everywhere on product packaging, on CDs, and even on other products that contain Microsoft products. We might as well take a closer look. If your computer uses Microsoft's Windows operating system, after booting, the pattern of the start window in the lower left corner is a trademark of Microsoft. Click "Start" and click " "Program", if you have installed Microsoft office system, you can see the names of Excel, Outlook and other programs, preceded by a small icon. These are Microsoft's registered trademarks, some are registered with graphics, and some are registered with text. Let's use Excel in the office system. Click the Excel icon and a box will appear in the middle of the computer screen. Fast machines may flash by, but we can still see the Excel icon and Microsoft's copyright statement inside. , this page contains several Microsoft trademarks. Enter the spreadsheet interface and pay attention to the small green graphic in the upper left corner. There is a green × in the small green box. This is Microsoft's registered trademark, the XL pattern (Microsoft Excel logo). From entering the operating system to the specific software page used, Microsoft has embedded its registered trademark into every page. We have researched and analyzed the methods used by foreign companies to mark trademarks. To sum up, it is actually very simple: "Anywhere where a registered trademark can be marked, it must be clearly marked, and the registered trademark must be followed by ? to indicate that it is a registered trademark." So Simply why our domestic enterprises don’t know how to do it? This is a matter of consciousness. It is easy to catch up with the technical gap. If there is no consciousness, the gap will be forever

R circled means that the registration procedure has been completed, TM means that the registration process is in progress, because according to the provisions of the Trademark Law, Trademark registration generally takes 18 months, so the trademark applicant can mark the TM mark by himself after receiving the trademark acceptance notice from the Trademark Office.