Trademarks are names, phrases, logos or images used to uniquely identify your company and your products and services. Because trademarks are used in businesses, there are rights you can claim to protect your company, and there are governing bodies that regulate the use of your trademark. In the United States of America, the governing body called United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the governing body that makes your trademark and patented product unique. They guarantee that no other company can carry the same name, logo or product without proper approval from you. Before any company is given approval for a trademark application, the USPTO scrutinizes the application, making sure that the trademark filing is unique and is in no way identical to any existing trademarks. Their primary task is to reject an application if there is the slightest possibility that any copyright infringement is or can be violated. In fact, a few years ago, a 17 year old boy named Mike Rowe registered and operated the web site www.mikerowesoft.com. When the software giant, Microsoft, discovered this, they filed to move that the site be shut down immediately. The courts granted in favor of Microsoft, stating that it would be damaging and confusing to the software company. Another well-publicized lawsuit over a URL address was between World Wildlife Foundation with the site www.wwf.org and the World Wrestling Federation bearing the site address www.wwf.com. The former sued the latter to drop the URL address stating that the practices of the former are detrimental to the image of the wildlife foundation. The World Wildlife Foundation was granted favor by the courts and World Wrestling Federation had to change their name to World Wrestling Entertainment and refrain from using the acronyms WWF. |
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