Limitations of a Trademark

Introduction

Trademark law protects the words, phrases, and symbols that identify the source of a product or service. The owner of a trademark has the exclusive right to use it in connection with their goods or services. A trademark can be anything from a word, slogan, or device that identifies one seller’s products or services as those of another. It is an essential element of business success because it helps consumers distinguish between competing brands when they’re shopping in stores or online.

Limitations of a Trademark

Trademarks are not protected by copyright laws, patents, trade secret laws, unfair competition laws, or anti-dilution laws. Trademarks can be registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). If you have a trademark and someone uses it in their name or business name after you’ve done so, then this is known as trademark infringement.

In addition to counterfeiting products that infringe on trademarks (like counterfeit designer bags), there are other ways people can commit trademark infringement without being obvious about it.

Trademark Does Not Protect Goods and Services

You might be surprised to learn that a trademark does not protect your goods or services. It only protects your brand. In other words, it protects the name, image, or other distinguishing characteristics of a product or service that you provide to consumers. For example, if you own the trademark for “McDonald’s” and someone else uses it without permission in order to sell hamburgers (an unauthorized use), then you can sue them for infringement because they are using your mark in connection with a good or service that is similar to yours.

Trademark Does Not Protect Against Infringement

You cannot use your trademark to stop all others from using it, no matter how similar the uses are. For instance, if you have a trademark for “Duh,” and someone starts selling their own brand of towels with the words “Duh” printed on them, that doesn’t violate your rights because they aren’t in competition with you (you sell clothes; they sell towels).

In other words, as long as a user is not likely to confuse customers about whether or not it’s coming from your company or product line (and doesn’t dilute/blur its distinctiveness), there’s nothing wrong with letting them use it.

Trademark Does Not Protect your Trade Secrets

You should be aware that a trademark does not protect your trade secrets. A trade secret is an information that can be used to benefit the business, but which is not generally known or easily ascertainable by others who can use it to compete with you. For example, if you have a recipe for a new type of sauce and it is kept secret from competitors, this would likely be considered a trade secret. If someone were able to steal that recipe and publish it on their website as their own, they would be violating federal law by misappropriating your company’s intellectual property (IP).

Trademark Does Not keep Someone from Counterfeiting

For example, if “CarMax” were a trademarked name for an automobile dealership, it would be illegal for any other car dealer to call itself CarMax or use “CarMax” in its advertising. However, another company could open up a new chain of dealerships called CarmaToy and sell cars at less than half the price of CarMax dealerships. This is because trademarks only protect against direct consumer confusion—they don’t prevent competitors from using words that sound similar to yours as long as customers can clearly tell them apart. The same goes for logos. You can trademark the design of your logo but not its general shape or design concept. If someone else has designed something similar enough that consumers might think it’s yours and buy theirs instead, then you have legal recourse against them even though they aren’t using your exact logo design!

Conclusion

You should keep in mind that a trademark is not designed to protect the goods and services that you offer, nor is it designed to protect your trade secrets or keep someone from creating an inferior product or service with your mark. A trademark is only designed to distinguish between similar marks used by different parties so that consumers can easily identify where they are purchasing goods or services. If you want more protection than just a trademark for your business name, then consider registering for a patent as well.