The way that your company uses its trademarks impacts efforts to federally register and maintain those trademarks. It’s important to properly use your marks for several reasons, including: (1) it strengthens the mark’s ability to identify your company as the source of the goods or services; (2) it is useful as evidence to defeat defenses that may be raised in trademark litigation, and (3) it reduces the chance that trademark rights will be lost through a finding that the mark is abandoned or generic.
Use the following rules to create company policies and educate employees to ensure company trademarks are used properly:
- Use proper trademark designation. If the mark is federally registered, you should put others on notice by using the ® designation, e.g. Acme®, but only when the mark is placed on goods or services listed in the registration. If your mark is unregistered and you are using it as a trademark–i.e. to identify a source of goods or services–then designate the mark with “TM”, e.g. Acme.TM
- Use mark only as an adjective, never as a noun, and never in the plural or possessive form. Correct: “You should take an Aspirin pain reliever.” Incorrect: “You should take an aspirin.”
- Use appropriate generic term following the mark. “Pain reliever” is the generic term in: “You should take an Aspirin pain reliever.”
- Do not use a mark as a verb. Correct: “I did a Google search on him.” Incorrect: “I Googled him.”
- Do not use trademark designation when word is used as a part of a legal corporate or LLC name. Correct: “CFA Corporation announces a new news program.” Incorrect: “CFA® Corporation announces a new news program.”
- Use appropriate and consistent capitalization. While no particular capitalization is required, the chosen capitalization should be used consistently. Many marks have the first letter capitalized; however, some use a lack of capitalization as a feature, e.g. “iPhone”.
Following these rules will support strong legal protection over your company’s trademarks and brand.