Am I doing it right? How to use your trade mark properly

Your trade mark is what distinguishes your goods and services from those of your competitors. Is there a right way (and more importantly a wrong way) to use your trade mark? Yes there is!

Photo by Hanna Balan

In fact, if you use your trade mark incorrectly it can lose its ability to distinguish your own goods/services. This happens when consumers associate the trade mark with a category of products rather than your products in particular. Examples are escalator, dry ice, hovercraft, and trampoline, which all started out as registered trade marks, and over time came to be synonymous not with the trading company, but with the type of goods. This is known as “genericide”, a colloquial reference meaning the trade mark has taken on a generic meaning.

If you have come up with an innovative product, and coined an innovative trade mark for it, the trade mark is at higher risk for becoming synonymous with the innovative product, and becoming generic.

Regardless of whether you have come up with an innovative product or service, the number-one rule for using your trade mark is:

• Use it as an adjective, followed by a generic noun which describes your product or service.

For example, GENTLE pencils, or HARDLINE rulers. A real-life example of an innovative product with an innovative trade mark is a CRONUT® pastry, a croissant-doughnut pastry treat invented by New York pastry chef Dominique Ansel.

Other recommendations are:

• When using it in text, highlight the trademark, using capital letters, or a different font, italics or colour;

“The Rainbow Pencil Co’s GENTLE pencils are designed for comfort!”;

• Avoid using the trade mark in a possessive form or plural form

i.e. CRONUTS;

• You should also use the appropriate marking: the TM symbol if your trade mark is not registered, and ® if it is registered

for example HARDLINE® rulers.