What is the difference between a trademark and a registered design [Fact Checked]

Last updated : Aug 25, 2022

What is the difference between trademark and design?

Trademark is the brand or logo associated with the goods or services of a company or individual. Design means the features of a pattern or shape that are applied to a particular article manufactured by an industrial process.

What is the difference between trademark and registered?

What is Trademark vs. Registered? The trademark symbol (TM) is a mark that companies often use on a logo, name, phrase, word, or design that represents the business. The registered symbol (R) represents a mark that is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

What does Registered design mean?

A registered design protects the shape, configuration, pattern or ornamentation of a product - that is, what gives a product a unique appearance.

Can I use TM symbol without registering?

Anyone can use a TM symbol regardless of whether they've successfully registered the trademark, or whether they've applied for a trademark at all. Even if the trademark application is rejected, the owner can continue to use the TM symbol.

Can you trademark a design?

Yes, you can trademark a design as long as it's used in the promotion of you business. For example, you can trademark logos, product packaging, and color schemes.

Is a design a trademark or patent?

Design patents protect the ornamental appearance of a unique looking design as applied to a product, which can be two-dimensional or three-dimensional. Design patents require registration with the USPTO whereas trademarks do not.

Can you use a trademark before it is registered?

Use or file trademark first? You do not have to apply for a trademark prior to using it. In most cases, trademark rights in the US are granted to the first one who uses a mark in commerce on particular goods or services. US trademark law recognizes the first user.

How long does a registered trademark last?

A federal trademark lasts 10 years from the date of registration, with 10-year renewal terms. Between the fifth and sixth year after the registration date, the registrant must file an affidavit to state that the mark is still in use.

Which is better copyright or trademark?

Copyright protects original work, whereas a trademark protects items that distinguish or identify a particular business from another. Copyright is generated automatically upon the creation of original work, whereas a trademark is established through common use of a mark in the course of business.

What is the purpose of registered designs?

A design registration helps protect the appearance of a product, such as its shape or pattern. Registering your design makes it easier to prove: that the design is legally yours.

How do I protect my design from being copied?

1. Protect Your Brand With a Trademark.
2. Protect Your Brand With a Registered Mark.
3. Protect Your Brand With a Patent.

What protection does a registered design give?

A registered design protects only the shape or appearance of a product. It gives its owner the exclusive right to the design of that product and it can be used to deter others from copying it, or stop them from continuing to do so, without consent.

Can I trademark a name already in use but not trademarked?

1. Can You File for a Trademark That Exists? Updated November 12, 2020: If you're wondering, "can you trademark something that already exists," the simple answer is "no." Generally speaking, if somebody has used a trademark before you, you can't register the trademark for yourself.

Can I just put a copyright symbol on my work?

You can place the copyright symbol on any original piece of work you have created. The normal format would be to include alongside the copyright symbol the year of first publication and the name of the copyright holder, however there are no particular legal requirements regarding this.

Can I put a TM on anything?

You can claim a trademark on anything by using the TM Symbol, but you can't use the registered trademark symbol (R) unless you have registered the trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

How do you tell if a design is patented?

1. Patent Public Search.
2. USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT)
3. USPTO Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT)
4. Global Dossier.
5. Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR)
6. Public Search Facility.
7. Patent and Trademark Resource Centers (PTRCs)

Where can I trademark a design?

You can register your trademark design with the USPTO by using the online Trademark Electronic Application System or an online trademark service. The process for registering a design trademark is the same as for any other type of trademark.

Do I really need to trademark my logo?

Trademarks protect words, names, symbols, sounds and colors and distinguish one company's goods and products from another. Trademarking a logo not only protects it from being used by other similar companies, it also protects a company from unknowingly infringing upon an existing logo.

Can trademark protect design?

Both trade marks and design rights can protect the shape, colour, and branding on products.

Can a name be trademarked twice?

So yes, it's entirely possible to trademark a last name, but if you cannot satisfactorily prove “acquired distinctiveness” to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you will be denied the full protection of federal law for your trademark.

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he folks today we're going to be discussing the differences between copyright and Trademark just a quick disclaimer to say that I am NOT an IP professional if you do require intellectual property advice please do seek out professional help so what is copyright copyright is there to protect your original creative works you can't copyright an idea you can copyright things like literary work dramatic works Musical and artistic work as long as they are in a tangible form what do I mean by a tangible form well things like books film recordings websites software photography paintings or graphic design elements like business cards or brochures having the copyright then gives you the exclusive rights to perform distribute make copies of or even make adaptations of your original creative work here in the UK there is no requirement to register your copyright it just happens automatically as soon as the work is created this may be different in your location so please check with your local Copyright Office or intellectual property office to get the full facts on how copyright is assigned in your country protection on copyright generally lasts for the lifetime of the author Plus 70 years again this may be different in your country so please check once you have created your work and the copyright is assigned you then have permission to use that little copyright symbol the little C inside the circle along with the year that the work was created however there is no requirement to use that little C symbol the copyright still remains with you at all times so let's move on to registered marks there are two types of registered marks and both of these can be used to protect the sale of products or services for a business the first is the trademark which is used to protect goods or products and the second is a service mark which you would use to protect services that you provide generally though people tend to use the town trademark to cover both our trademark and the service mark for the purpose of this video I will be using the term registered mark which covers both examples of things that can be covered by a registered mark would be a company name a slogan a sound a color under logo once you have that registered mark you have the exclusive rights to use that mark with your product or service it allows you to stop other companies businesses or organizations from using a similar mark to promote or sell a similar product or service what you can't do is you can't prevent someone from using a similar mark if they are using it to promote or sell a dissimilar product or service let's look at this example of two locals one for Sun Microsystems and the other for Columbia Sportswear now visually these two logos are very similar especially if they were both in black for example and you just had a quick glance at the logos the reason that both of these similar logos can exist and be registered as marks is that there are two completely different industries Sun Microsystems is in software and computing and Columbia is in sportswear two very different industries now however let's say Sun Microsystems were in the spa for businesses while then we would have an issue because they would both have similar marks selling or trading similar products this can't happen so what would happen here is that the company that registered their mark first would be able to prevent the second company from registering the mark which is similar to theirs and in a similar industry in its simplest form registered marks are there to help the consumer differentiate between brands and the products and services that they sell if when you try to register a new mark the internal Property Office will look at existing marks and if they feel that by registering your mark this may cause confusion for the consumer when they are looking to buy a product or service from someone who is in the same industry as you they will deny you that registration once you have registered your mark though you can use the little R symbol inside the circle next to your logo or your brand name unlike copyright registered marks can last indefinitely but they do have to be renewed every 10 years one thing that you cannot do is you cannot register a mark and sit it on a shelf for use at a later date for a registered mark to be viable it must be in constant use so those are the main differences between copyright under registered mark or as I mentioned earlier most people just use the town trademark I hope this cleared up any confusion you may have had in the past about the two terms and you can move forward safe in the knowledge that you have the correct understanding for both for more brand and design advice why not join hundreds of other brand rockers who have signed up to my rock your brand monthly email newsletter it's absolutely free and the advice that I give in there will help you to strengthen your brand and stand out from your competition head on over to rock your brand or quote at UK and sign up until I see you next time folks stay creative

Thanks for your comment Norris Werdlow, have a nice day.
- Jamaal Wojtas, Staff Member

this podcast is sponsored by murgatroyd intellectual property attorneys for more information on today's guest and our company visit murgatroyd.com forward slash podcasts hello and welcome to the fifth season of murgatroyd's innovation talks podcasts we're delighted you have joined us if you have any questions you can email us at innovation.talks murgatroyd.com or contact us via twitter at murgatroid and please remember to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes so let's go straight into today's podcast hi there i'm wendy crosby and i am the head of the design team here at murray troyd i generally work out of our aberdeen office but i'm currently working from home i'm pleased to be joined today by my fellow director from our trademarks group eleanor coats and we're going to be talking today about the crossover and protection between trademarks and designs and opportunities that companies could have particularly where you're looking to protect aspects of branding to get additional protection that can be very helpful for them in a commercial market so hi eleanor to be with you again good to see you as well absolutely i think eleanor it'd be really good if you could kick off and just give us a brief overview of what trademarks protect and then i'll do the same with designs and we can go from there okay well trademark protection it can cover any aspects really of your brand because it can cover the words your logo it can cover a 3d shape it could be letters and it gives you quite a strong monopoly in that and it will last for 10 years and can be renewed indefinitely what's the differences then with the designs wendy with designs everything is all about the appearance of the product so when i think of trademarks i think about the brand name that someone has chosen for their particular range of products but with designs everything is to do with what the product itself looks like so it could be the shape of the product or it could even be the colors that are applied to the product so the the pattern that is on your product rather than the shape of your product itself and the types of things that i was thinking about that you might have a registered design for are the distinctive shape of a drinks bottle or the pattern that's applied or even the colors on the packaging of a chocolate bar for example so i think of designs as being visual appearance of products and the product might be the external packaging of the goods or it might be the goods themselves you can get trademark protection for 3d shapes such as perhaps the shape of a bottle but it's much harder to get because trademarks have a distinctiveness criteria and four elements of packaging particularly ones which are fairly standard like a bottle shape while you might get a registration if the bottle shape is particularly unusual and something that the consumer would recognize as being a trademark and having trademark origin meaning which means that they know it comes from one entity then if you don't have that level of distinctiveness regarding the shape then you won't be able to secure trademark registration in the 3d shape alone and that's probably quite a key difference between designs and trademarks is that you can get trademark protection for some 3d shapes but there's much stricter requirements because the requirements for registering our design aren't nearly as stringent as that are they key wendy absolutely in terms of designs we would be able to file an application for a bottle shape for example and we don't have to have the same requirement for distinctiveness and the link to a particular company or origin for that shape so we we can file design applications for bottle shapes and i'm thinking particularly for clients such as in the food and drinks industry where you may have different shapes of whiskey bottles for different products within your range or alternatively for flavored water bottles for example again you may have different shapes in the bottle and i think designs are particularly helpful in those respects and that's one of the aspects of difference between designs and trademarks where as my understanding for trademarks you can build up your use of a trademark over time and build up the distinctiveness of that mark before you file your application whereas with designs we do have a requirement that the design is new or i will say nearly new we have a 12-month grace period between disclosing the design for the first time and still validly filing an application to protect that design so it can be useful for companies to put out a new range of bottle shape for example and if customers really like that particular shape and are giving them good feedback on it they still have an opportunity to protect the design within that 12-month window what would you classify as disclosing just for anyone who perhaps isn't as aware of designs as you and i are what would you say about disclosure is that putting it on your own website perhaps or is it putting it into the shops how big a disclosure do you are you required to make you're really looking at a disclosure to the public so if it's on your website that would certainly count as a disclosure equally if it was out in the shops and already on sale that would also be a disclosure if it's something that your company is working with internally and you have memos going around a team that would not be seen as a disclosure so it really has to be something that the public or at least people in the sector of the economy that you work in would be able to become aware of it one of the things that i've often used design registration with my clients particularly with the launch of new packaging is the ability as well to defer the publication because when you file a trademark application you it goes on to the register really within about two to three days of the file the application being filed and particularly in the uk there's a requirement for intention to use so you can't really have a third party be filing the trademark they won't have the intention to use so it has to be the actual party who's going to use the name so that can disclose to your competitors to the wider world that you're interested in this new name or new packaging but you can't avoid that with designs can't we you certainly can we can file an application with the request for deferred publication normally the time scale from filing a design application either in europe or in the uk is very quick so if we file an application it will generally be published and registered within a matter of days from filing the application at the relevant office but if we make a request for deferred publication on filing then certainly in europe we can extend the period of time before there's any publication by up to 30 months from when we file the application so that can enable you to file your application so that you meet the novelty and new requirements side of things but not release the designs for publication until you're ready to do so and that way competitors won't necessarily be alerted to what your new design is and that's a way to ensure that you're satisfying the novelty req

Thanks Nicolas your participation is very much appreciated
- Jamaal Wojtas

About the author

Jamaal Wojtas

I've studied atomic physics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and I am an expert in world history. I usually feel exanimate. My previous job was sports agent I held this position for 11 years, I love talking about carrier pigeons and kite flying. Huge fan of N.W.A I practice balance beam and collect comic books.