One of the goals of business owners is to make their business and products easily recognizable to their customers and the public in general. If the business can protect its identity with consumers, it encourages production of better products and an emphasis on building goodwill. The United States Patent and Trademark Office offers protection for businesses through the exercise of trademark law.
Trademarks allow businesses to register a word, symbol, logo, or phrase used to identify a particular manufacturer. Service marks are used to identify services, and are treated in the same fashion as trademarks. Trademark law can also apply to a business' unique packaging or color; this is referred to as trade dress . A trademark can only be granted if the item is distinctive; the spectrum of distinctiveness is measured along five categories. The mark can be fanciful, arbitrary, suggestive, descriptive, or generic.
The fanciful mark is the strongest mark, it is a mark that has been invented for the sole purpose of acting as the trademark and has no other significance, for example EXXON. An arbitrary mark is one that uses a device that has common meaning but no relation to the goods or services, such as Apple used for computers. A suggestive mark is one that suggests quality or characteristic of the goods with use of some imagination. One example is Microsoft, which implies software for microcomputers. Descriptive marks are marks that merely describe the service or goods, which cannot be trademarked. If a descriptive mark builds a secondary meaning with the public and becomes distinctive, it can be trademarked. Marks that are primarily surnames are treated in the same respect as descriptive marks. Therefore if a person's surname is similar to a trademarked name, it cannot be used in a way confuses the product with the previously trademarked device. Generic marks are not able to function as a trademark because it is the name of the product. A valid trademark can become generic if the consuming public misuses the mark sufficiently for the mark to become the generic name for the product, this occurred with aspirin .
In recent years, trademark infringement has become a very serious issue for companies that have operated with little discrepancy about their mark for many years. Many trademarks have been jeopardized through a act called Cybersquatting. Cybersquatting is the act of registering a domain name with the intent of selling it for profit.
Several possible legal issues are evident in the scenario. In this scenario, the name Hallowed would receive protection as a trademark since it is a word that distinguishes the product from others. A trademark is understood as a design, symbol, phrase or word or a mix of these that distinguishes and identifies the source of the goods of one firm from those of other firms. A trade dress basically refers to the visual impression which is created by the totality of every element utilized in packaging or presenting a service or good for sale. In essence, it gives the product an identifiable and distinct look (Jameson 212). The name Hallowed cannot be a trade dress since it is not a visual expression, but rather a name.
In every given business, the name itself portrays different meanings. This serves as the reference point and sometimes the basis of customers on what to expect within the company. Since personality affects product image (Langmeyer & Shank, 1994), the presence of brand helps in the realization of this concept. Traditionally, brand is a symbolic manifestation of all the information connected with a company, product, or service (Nilson, 2003; Olin, 2003). A brand is typically composed of a name, logo, and other visual elements such as images, colors, and icons (Gillooley & Varley, 2001; Laforet & Saunders, 1994)). It is believed that a brand puts an impression to the consumer on what to expect to the product or service being offered (Mere, 1995). In other application, brand may be referred as trademark, which is legally appropriate term. The brand is the most powerful weapon in the market (LePla & Parker, 1999). Brands possess personality in which people associate their experience. Oftentimes, they are related to the core values the company executes.
In the absence of registered trade mark rights, case law suggests as a general principle, that mere similarity of goods is not enough for an actionable wrong to occur. Passing off derives from the common law action deceit which is the civil action for fraudulent misrepresentation. Passing off is a non-statutory cause of action that has developed over the years through case law and has changed considerably overtime. Passing off came into existence long before trademarks became registerable and has always been available at common law for marks refused registration, not registered or ineligible for
Under the worldwide financial environment, China is considered as a big market for every international corporation. When a brand wants to enter China, can its trademark be protected in the potential market? For instance, CarMan, a registered German trademark, is famous in Euro after using for several years. Now, CarMan is eager to enter China’s market, but there is a same trademark has been registered and used in the same goods as CarMan. The following part is trying to solve disputes arose from the situations like CarMan.
“Protecting your intellectual property is crucial to your business.” (Hinson, 2014) When business have intellectual property that is going to be popular or helpful in advancing there business, they have to take measures to ensure that the ideas or prototypes are protected from other that may steal the intellectual property. In the United States, many laws or safeguard steps have to be followed in order to preserve the intellectual property. A business owner has the right to protect the intellectual property, because the failure to do so could result in demise of the business itself.
A business name is an important part of marketing effort. It shows how customers perceive the business and the image of the business is based on this perception (Fox, 2012). It is
What is branding? Branding has been advocated as a potentially successful response to heightened market concentration; it offers the possibilities of centralized control and format standardization, and an added value or cost driven strategy can be used to differentiate the retail offering and reinforce market positioning. Brands provide informational cues for buyers about the store's merchandise quality, and favourable images of brands positively influence patronage decisions." Successful retail branding can provide a form of "insulation" against price competition and states: "Where the store brand name is itself a brand name based on a quality appeal, it will be easier to position the own brand as a premium product under the same name" (Schmidt, R., & Pioch, E., 2005). Further as consumers, we tend to think about brands as symbols like the Nike swoosh or McDonald’s golden arches; the working definition of a brand is broader. A brand is usually defined as a name, logo, symbol, words, or combination of these, intended to distinguish a particular company’s offerings from those of competitors. In this sense, the modern use of the word “brand” harkens back to its older meaning which is a distinguishing mark or burn to identify wine, livestock or other commodities by their owner (Koehn, N., 2013).
Kotler’s (1997) definition of branding is that: “A name, term, sign, symbol or design, or combination of them, intended
The World Intellectual Property Organization, Intellectual property is the ‘products of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, any symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce’. Intellectual Properties such as Patents, designs, trademarks and copyrights are protected by laws .The US government offers different types of protection for these properties. The Lanham Act (15 U.S.C.A. section 1051 et seq) also known as the trademark act of 1946 provides protection for trademarks. A trademark is defined as a name, a word, a symbol, or device or any combination thereof, adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant to identify his goods and distinguish them from those manufactured and sold by others. (Miaoulis 1978)
Brand; - brand is known as uniqueness in term of what products or service the company provides. Brand is also set of insight or image that represents seller. Brand defines symbol, name, term or feature of company’s service or goods. Example of popular brand is apple, Amazon and Samsung.
Because of its intangible nature, and particularly the increase of the digital domain and the internet as a whole, computers and cyber piracy make it easier for people to steal many forms of intellectual property. Due to this major threat, intellectual property rights owners’ should take every single measure to protect their rights. Unless these rights are either sold, exchanged, transferred, or appropriately licensed for use in exchange for a monetary fee, they should be protected at all cost. In order to protect these rights, the federal and states governments have passed numerous laws and statutes to protect intellectual property from misappropriation and infringement. “The source of federal copyright and patent law originates with the Copyright and Patent ...
Brand is the name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of others. Initially, Branding was adopted to differentiate one person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol, and was subsequently used in business, marketing, and advertising.
... right people by increasing the awareness about the product, its benefits and drawbacks. This is important for the success of a business.
Product is the core of marketing, which including tangible goods like food or drinks or intangible services, as it is the major way to embody customers requirements; and, branding is directly associated with it. In fact, branding is all about decisio ns of products, like brand names or trademarks. Stork (2007) asserted that a brand is a unique business identity which represents the personality, quality or origin of products. And, such a product which added value by branding would appear in every activity of marketing, namely, branding is actually react on the whole marketing system directly and indirectly.
The term 'branding' in modern marketing is generally originated in the agricultural practices of the medieval age. The farmers 'branded' their animals with the iron and then they were able to identify to whom a particular animal belonged. Artisans 'branded' their products, for example, expensive silver tableware. Smiths 'branded' their swords. The role of the brand is to identify products by the same way as for medieval farmers and for modern corporations as well.