What is a trademark?
A trademark can be any distinctive mark such as a word, slogan, letter, number, sound, smell, shape, logo, picture, aspect of packaging or any combination of these.
They are used to distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of another.
A registered trademark gives the legal right to use, license or sell it within the country where it is registered for the goods and services for which it is registered.
The difference between trademarks, business, company and domain names sometimes causes confusion. Registration of a business, company or domain name does not in itself give you any proprietary rights - only a trademark can give you that kind of protection. The same word(s) may be registered by different people as business names and trademarks. But the registered trademark owner can sue the business owner for infringing the trademark if the business name owner uses the trademark on goods or services similar to those covered by the trademark registration.
As with patents and design registrations, it is possible to obtain trademark registration in more than one country based on a first filed application or registration using various international conventions.
Registered trademarks are usually indicated by the super-script ® symbol and unregistered trademarks with the super-script lettersTM. .