Different Types Of Trademarks
Trademark protection is granted for words, logos and images that identify goods of one company as different from others. The prime function of trademarks is to prevent any confusion in the consumers’ minds about the origin of a product that they plan to purchase.
A trademark must be unique and remarkably distinct for the customers to identify it quickly even amongst a crowd of similar products in the market. The uniqueness of a trademark can be assessed by slotting it in one of the trademark groups – suggestive, descriptive, generic and arbitrary.
A descriptive mark is representative of the quality or some other characteristics of the product like its utility or form. However, marks that are descriptive are not as distinctive as some other marks and therefore, they are not normally eligible to be trademarked. Although, if the mark has acquired a secondary identification that is more popular among the consumers, it can be trademarked.
Suggestive marks, as the name indicates, suggest a characteristic of the product. However, the relationship between the name and the good is not obviously evident and it might need a little bit of imagination on the part of the consumers to understand it. For example, the shoes named ‘Hush Puppies’ are suggestive of cosy shoes, which make sure that your feet do not develop sores. It is interesting to note that ‘barking dogs’ is a slang for sore feet in some regions, especially in America.
Fanciful marks are those marks that do not have any connection whatsoever with the commodity itself. For instance, there is no real connection between the symbol of a half eaten apple and the brand name ‘Apple’ to the renowned computer manufacturer. Arbitrary marks are those marks that are not used in current languages and are the outcome of the imagination of the manufacturer, such as ‘Exxon’.
Finally, the category of generic marks clearly describes the items, like ’sports wear’, and they cannot be granted any trademark protection due to their vagueness.
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