|
Sliding Scale of Trademarks
There are four basic categories of marks.
These include fanciful and arbitrary marks, suggestive
marks, descriptive marks, and generic terms. Fanciful
marks, such as EXXON® and XEROX®, are completely
made-up. Arbitrary marks in no way describe the
goods or services they are meant to identify. Examples
of arbitrary marks include APPLE® for computers
and IVORY® for soap. They are common English-language
words, but are "arbitrary" as applied
to the specific goods or services for which they
are used. Suggestive marks, such as 7 ELEVEN®
and COPPERTONE®, indirectly describe the products
or services they identify. All of these categories
can be valid trademarks.
Descriptive marks include marks which merely describe
the products or services they identify, describe
the geographical location from which the goods or
services emanate, or comprise a person's surname.
Examples of descriptive marks include CHAP STICK®
and BUFFERIN®. Descriptive words can generally
be valid marks only after a number of years of use
and extensive advertising resulting in "secondary
meaning" as a trademark. Finally, a generic
term is a common descriptive name of goods or services
such as "computer", "internet",
or "lip balm". A generic term can never
become a trademark.
|
|
. . . . .
TRADEMARK
SEARCH
. . . . .
TRADEMARK
MONITORING
. . . . .
TRADEMARK
APPLICATION
. . . . .
LEGAL
ADVICE REGARDING TRADEMARKS
. . . . .
|
