CATEGORIES OF MARK IN TRADEMARK ACT.
INTRODUCTION:
With upcoming growth the companies and organisations race to gain a legal monopoly on their rare and exclusive innovations through marks and registration,to safeguard it’s assignment of rights, nature of infringements, penalties for such infringement and remedies available to the owner in case of such infringement.
About Trademark:
A trademark is a type of intellectual property. Trademarks protect the use of a company’s name and its product names, brand identity (like logos) and slogans.A trademark is a word, name, phrase, logo‚ or symbol used to identify the source of products or services and distinguish those products from others. It is highly recommended that a trademark be registered, but trademark rights can also be acquired by common law.
Understanding the general types of trademark:
Generic Mark:
A generic term is a common description that does not receive trademark protection. Generic terms may be used freely. Providing a generic term with trademark protection could potentially allow its holder to unfairly monopolize common language, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products or services, usually against the intentions of the trademark’s owner.
For example Some of the popular trademark names that have now become generic because of the wrongful and continuous use by the public are – Aspirin, Cellophane, Zipper, Kleenex, Thermos, Popsicle , Tupperware etc.
Suggestive Mark:
A term that shows importance and implications about the good and services without explaining anything in particular or individual can be afforded trademark protection and prevention even without a secondary definition. This type of trademark requires the consumer to use his or her imagination to find out the actual nature of the product and services.
A suggestive mark, on the other hand, is something that alludes to its purpose but doesn’t explicitly state it.
A suggestive mark hints at or suggests the nature of a product or service or one of its attributes without actually explaining the product and services.
A few examples of suggestive trademarks are Greyhound (buses), Jaguar (vehicles), and Playboy (magazine) etc.
Descriptive Mark:
A term that describes the nature of the goods or services will be afforded trademark protection only if the owner proves an additional meaning resulting from the public’s connection of the mark with the owner’s goods or services.
A merely descriptive mark is something that gives the customer an immediate idea of what the name entails and requires no existing knowledge to make sense of.
In general, a descriptive mark is a word (or words) that merely describes a product or its ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose or use. Descriptive marks are a type of trademark that are usually composed of a word or words that merely describe a product or that identify the characteristics of a product and are generally considered weak marks. Generally, such marks are unlikely to be granted registration or protection under trademark law.
An example of a merely descriptive mark would be COLD AND CREAMY for ice cream.
Arbitrary or Fanciful Mark: The most trademark protection is afforded to fanciful or arbitrary marks. A fanciful trademark is one that the owner has made-up or created for his own purposes or soul purpose of marketing their product or service under a trademark. Common examples include Nike, XEROX, and Kodak etc. An arbitrary trademark is one with a common meaning, but the meaning is unrelated to the goods or services offered for sale under the mark. For example, Apple computers has used the common term for a fruit and associated it with computer technology.
Conclusion
Trademark is a logo or combination of characters and numerals used by a company to claim its ownership on a term or design to represent its products and services. There are various types of trademarks which can be registered like product mark, service mark, collective mark, certification mark, shape mark, sound mark and pattern mark. Though there are many kinds of trademarks, their purpose is for the same – which is to enable the consumers to identify goods and services originating from a certain manufacturer or services provider. In this article, we look at the various types of trademark, STRONG TRADEMARKS – FANCIFUL, ARBITRARY, AND SUGGESTIVE TRADEMARKS Fanciful, arbitrary and
suggestive trademarks are the strongest types of trademarks and are entitled to the most protection.
WEAK TRADEMARKS – MERELY DESCRIPTIVE, DESCRIPTIVE, AND GENERIC
TRADEMARKS Descriptive, merely descriptive, and generic trademarks are considered weak or not protectible.
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References:
1.https://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/selecting-a-strong-trademark-the-four-types-of-mar ks
2.https://www.indiafilings.com/learn/types-of-trademark/
3.https://www.mandourlaw.com/types-of-trademarks/
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