| How Trademarks Are Classified |
| Written by Elizabeth Brown |
| Wednesday, 28 October 2009 03:26 |
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Trademark is a kind of IPR that protects certain symbols, words etc of a firm from being misused by others. The basic purpose of trademarks is to make sure that consumers can purchase the correct products without being influenced by the spurious or counterfeited ones.
Trademark safety is granted for terms, logos and images that identify products of one firm as different from others. The prime function of trademarks is to prevent any confusion in the consumers' minds about the source of an item that they intend to purchase. One of the key requirements for a trademark is that it must be different, which means it must be exclusive and identifiable. The uniqueness of a trademark can be assessed by placing it in one of the trademark classifications - suggestive, descriptive, fanciful, and generic. A descriptive mark uses a specific feature or quality of a commodity to separate it from other commodities of its type. Although some descriptive marks that have acquired a secondary meaning in the marketplace, which the consumers can recognize as originating from a specific source, can be trademarked, this is not the usual case as descriptive marks are hardly ever unique. Suggestive marks on the other hand indicate a specific feature of the product. However, the relation between the name and the good is not obviously perceptible and it might need a little bit of imagination on the part of the customers to understand it. For instance, the shoes named 'Hush Puppies' are indicative of cosy shoes, which make sure that your feet do not become sore. It is interesting to note that 'barking dogs' is a slang for sore feet in some regions, particularly in the US. Arbitrary marks are those marks that do not have any link whatsoever with the product itself. For example, there is no real connection between the symbol of a half bitten apple and the product name 'Apple' to the renowned computer manufacturer. In a similar way, fanciful marks are those that come from the creative imagination of the manufacturer or come from classical languages like Latin and Greek. Finally, the category of generic marks plainly describes the items, like 'sports wear', and they cannot be granted any trademark protection due to lack of distinctiveness. About the Author: Discover more about Trademarks and learn how does an Patents protection increase the net worth of your business very fast. |