Registered trademark symbol
Typographical symbol (®)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
U+2120 ℠ SERVICE MARK
| ® | |
|---|---|
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
The 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
Canada
- 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
- 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
- Most word processors will autocorrect these two sequences to a proper ® symbol.
