The registered trademark symbol, ®, is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company, product or service.[1][2]
| ® | |
|---|---|
Registered trademark symbol | |
| In Unicode | U+00AE ® REGISTERED SIGN (®, ®, ®) |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+24C7 Ⓡ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R |
| Related | |
| See also | U+2122 ™ TRADE MARK SIGN U+2120 ℠ SERVICE MARK |
Unregistered trademarks can instead be marked with the trademark symbol, ™, while unregistered service marks are marked with the service mark symbol, ℠. The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark; the symbol is commonly in superscript style, but that is not legally required. In many jurisdictions, only registered trademarks confer easily defended legal rights.[3]
In the US, the registered trademark symbol was originally introduced in the Trademark Act of 1946.[4]
Because the symbol is not commonly available on typewriters (or ASCII), it was common to approximate it with "(r)"[5] or "(R)".[a] It is also legal in the US to use the text "Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office" or "Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off."[2][6]
Computer usage
editThe registered trademark character was added to several extended ASCII character sets, including ISO-8859-1 from which it was inherited by Unicode as U+00AE ® REGISTERED SIGN.[7]
Other national marks
editCanada
- Official mark symbol, U+24C2 Ⓜ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M, used in Canada also has an to indicate that a name or design used by Canadian public authorities is protected.[citation needed]
- Marque de commerce symbol, U+1F16A 🅪 RAISED MC SIGN, is used in Quebec.
China
- In China, the trademark regulations provide the symbol ㊟ (U+329F ㊟ CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH ATTENTION) may be used to show a registered trademark instead of ®.[8]
Germany
- Warenzeichen grapheme, U+1F12E 🄮 CIRCLED WZ, used in some German publications, especially dictionaries, as informative and independent of the actual protection status of the name.
See also
edit- The trademark symbol, U+2122 ™ TRADE MARK SIGN, used for unregistered trademarks
- The service mark symbol, U+2120 ℠ SERVICE MARK, used for unregistered service marks
- The copyright symbol, U+00A9 © COPYRIGHT SIGN
- The sound recording copyright symbol, U+2117 ℗ SOUND RECORDING COPYRIGHT
- The Orthodox Union hechsher symbol, U+24CA Ⓤ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U
Notes
edit- ↑ Most word processors will autocorrect these two sequences to a proper ® symbol.
References
edit- ↑ For example, "Intellectual property office". Government of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
- 1 2 "15 U.S.C. 1111". Retrieved 15 December 2005.
- ↑ For example "Unregistered Trade Marks". Government of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
- ↑ "The Origin of the ® Symbol: How the Lanham Act of 1946 Shaped Trademark History".
- ↑ "PSF Trademark Usage Policy".
The first or most prominent mention of a Python trademark should be immediately followed by a symbol for registered trademark: "®" or "(r)".
- ↑ Guillot., Gregory H. "A Guide to Proper Trademark Use. 1995–2007". Archived from the original on June 11, 2019.
- ↑ "C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement | Range: 0080–00FF" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2016.
- ↑ "中华人民共和国商标法实施条例". 中国政府网_国务院文件 (in Chinese). 2014-05-01 [Issued 2014-05-01]. Translated in "Trademark Act Administrative Regulations of the People's Republic of China". CBL Translations. Retrieved 2025-07-10.
External links
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