We have customers keep asking us the same questions. “What is the difference between Registered Trademark, Service Mark and Copyright?”

So we have decided to post this article for those who are willing to learn more about it.

Trademark symbols protect your various product names, titles, logo design, brochure designs, custom web design and other graphic design elements that are used to identify your company as the source of a product. In this way, trademarks help your company to maintain a distinct identity in the marketplace.

Once you put a trademark on a product in the marketplace, it provides legal protection. However, they do not prevent other companies from producing the same products with a clearly different mark – you cannot trademark an idea but you can trademark the expression of an idea.

Although trademarks protect, they must also be protected by registering with the US Patent and Trademark Office. A Registered Trademark  costs anywhere from $325 and up, and often takes a year and even up to several years to process, since there is more research involved in issuing it. Once registered, you can change the ™ to ®.

Companies must constantly monitor their trademarks so that they don’t slip into generic use; if they do, More >