skip to content rich footer

stevenclark.com.au

subscibe to the StevenClark.com.au rss feed

False Claim of a Registered Trademark

IP Australia is worth reading if you want to understand your rights in areas such as copyright and trademark. For example, its against the law to use the Registered Trademark (®) symbol after your website or business name (or your client’s for that matter) when you don’t even have an application for registration. The IP Australia website FAQ states this is a federal offence under section 151 of the Trade Marks Act 1995. Yes a criminal offence.

Use of letters ® and TM

Q. Who can use the ®?You may use the ® (Registered symbol) next to your trade mark once your trade mark is registered. If your trade mark is registered overseas but not in Australia, you can also use the symbol, but you need to show the country of registration close to it. Anyone can use the TM symbol (Trademark symbol) as this does not indicate that the trade mark is registered.

Q. Is it an offence to use the ®, if your trade mark is not registered? What can I do if someone is using it and they do not have a trade mark registration?

Yes, it is an offence-see section 151 of the Trade Marks Act 1995. The Trade Marks Office, however, does not police or investigate such matters.

If you have real concerns about someone using the ®, you might consider contacting the Australian Federal Police, as it is a criminal offence, to ask them to investigate the matter. However, the AFP may not have the capacity to follow up the matter and would need to assess it in the context of their other priorities at the time.

Q. Is there a penalty if the letters TM are used?

No, however there is a penalty if ® is used on an unregistered trade mark. If ® is used on a trade mark which is registered overseas but not in Australia, the country of registration must be shown in close proximity to the ®.

So I guess you can TM your heart out but its healthy business not to break the law by claiming ® status unless you’ve actually gone through the process. There seem to be enough people uncertain about the distinction between the two claims that it was worth posting the information here.

Even if the Australian Federal Police and IP Australia are not that interested in pursuit of people who break this law its not worth your business reputation on the off chance that you’ll wind up in court. If you don’t have registered status just use the TM symbol and play it safe.

3 Responses to “False Claim of a Registered Trademark”

  1. Matt Robin

    This is a great post (TM) by the way…

    When I read this initially, I couldn’t think of anything really useful to add. But now, a few days later, well there’s a nice link I can throw in to the comments…actually, it doesn’t relate that closely to the specifics of your article mate - but it does have some good tips about Copyright chasing! I’ve bookmarked it in my ‘Legal’ folder* - so here’s me doing some sharing:

    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/four-ways-to-enforce-your-copyright-what-to-do-when-your-online-content-is-being-stolen

    *Hey, isn’t it a bit sad that I even need to have a folder about Legal-type matters on the Web?! Hmm… :|

  2. Matt Robin

    ..(Gawd their blog post title was absurdly long!! Sorry about that…should’ve used a tiny-url for it!)

  3. steven

    Yeh its surprising the number of people who are working with or generate content who have no idea of their geographical specific rights with regard to copyright… I remember complaining once to a guy in California, a big money web firm, who had ripped a contact form page (Linden’s art site one in fact) and rebadged it with the exact same colours and everything - only changes were his logo and his own copyright at the bottom. OK so I complained…

    He said all he grabbed it for was the palette. I asked why he didn’t just grab the palette then and why put his own copyright on it? He then locked it away behind a password. Who knows what he did with it? And that was a rather successful web company who I had high regard for until that point. Obviously they get their web standards work done by ripping layouts and rebadging…

    ahhh the nature of the work we do :)

    and thanks for the link, it was an interesting read.

Stand Up Guy

Steven Clark Steven Clark - the stand up guy on this site

An icon for overweight middle aged bogun-geek web designers. A lego block in a Meccano world. A synergy of tattoos, memories of bare knuckle fist fights, and old episodes of Star Trek. My name is Steven Clark and I'm a highly opinionated web designer with a few good ideas. I'm too old for fist fights.

My Photography Blog

My photography blog Walk a Mile in my Shoes is back up and running. Due to bandwidth issues it's only one image at a time and not full text in the RSS feed. It's licensed under creative commons , meaning not for commercial use and you need to attribute, otherwise drop me a line via the contact form on this site.

My Links Blog

You might also like to check out my links blog over at Nortypig.com to learn more about everything worth mentioning.

My Illustrations

Currently I only have a static page for illustrations but if time allows I'd like to start another illustration blog.

Declaration of Independence

Site Content

Developed and published by Steven Clark

Site Supporters

Hosted by Brett at Tashosting

skip to top of page

Currently Reading

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (cover)

Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations has been on my bookshelf for the last few months literally screaming to be read. In fact, I'm wondering how I got so sidetracked to have reached the end of the year without having consumed it. The message of the book is an area of my own fascination, the effects that our new technologies have on the way we relate to each other, and how we're now empowered in ways that were historically unheard of (or not even conceived of) not too long ago.

I'm a small town boy who grew up in the seventies, graduating high school in 1979. The world was slower - how did we survive without Wikipedia? Without MSN or Facebook? Nowdays we have flashmobbing and blogging and constant connection.