Registered trademark symbol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The registered trademark symbol, designated by ® (a circled R), is a symbol used to provide notice that the preceding mark is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office.[1]. In some countries, is against the law to use the registered trademark symbol for a mark that is not officially registered in any country.[1] Trademarks not so registered are instead marked with the trademark symbol ™, while unregistered service marks are marked with the service mark symbol ℠. The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark in superscript style. The registered trademark symbol ® is distinct from the similar enclosed R character (Ⓡ).
Because the ® symbol has long been unavailable on typewriters and ASCII-based computer systems, it has been common to approximate this symbol with the characters (R) or (r); for example, the Python language Trademark Usage Policy advocates this usage.[2] However, these forms do not have legal force.[citation needed] Example of legal equivalents are the phrase "Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office," which may be abbreviated to "Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off.",[3] in the U.S., and the letters "RTM" in the UK.[1]
The character is mapped in Unicode under position U+00AE.[4] On Windows systems, a superscript registered trademark symbol may be entered by means of Alt codes, by holding the ALT key while typing the numbers 0174 on the numeric keypad. On Macintosh systems, it may be entered with Option-R. In HTML the entity used is ®, in LaTeX it is \textregistered.
[edit] Related symbols
- The trademark symbol TM, used for unregistered trademarks.
- The similar copyright symbol, featuring a C instead of an R in the circle.
- The similar sound recording copyright symbol, featuring a P instead of an R in the circle.
- The similar kosher symbol, featuring a K instead of an R in the circle.
- The similar hechsher symbol, featuring a U instead of an R in the circle.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c UK IPO, one example of a national trade mark office
- ^ PSF Trademark Usage Policy. http://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/ "The first or most prominent mention of a Python trademark should be immediately followed by a symbol for registered trademark: "®" or "(r)"."
- ^ Gregory H. Guillot. A Guide to Proper Trademark Use. 1995-2007. http://www.ggmark.com/guide.html
- ^ http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf
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