® | |
---|---|
Registered trademark symbol | |
In Unicode | U+00AE ® REGISTERED SIGN (HTML ® · ®, ®, ® ) |
Different from | |
Different from | U+24C7 Ⓡ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R |
Related | |
See also | U+2122 ™ TRADE MARK SIGN U+2120 ℠ SERVICE MARK |
The registered trademark symbol, ®, is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company or product.[1][2] In some countries it is against the law to use the registered trademark symbol for a mark that is not officially registered in any country.[3]
Unregistered trademarks can instead be 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; the symbol is commonly in superscript style, but that is not legally required. In many jurisdictions, only registered trademarks confer easily defended legal rights.[4]
In the US, the registered trademark symbol was originally introduced in the Trademark Act of 1946.[5]
Because the ® symbol is not commonly available on typewriters (or ASCII), it was common to approximate it with the characters (R) (or (r)).[a][b] An example of a legal equivalent is the phrase Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which may be abbreviated to Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off.[7] in the US.[2]
Computer usage[edit]
The registered trademark character was added to several extended ASCII character sets, including ISO-8859-1 from which it was inherited by Unicode as U+00AE ® REGISTERED SIGN.[8][9] This is a different character from U+24C7 Ⓡ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R as many fonts draw the registered trademark symbol smaller and possibly superscripted.
Typing the character[edit]
- Canadian Multilingual Standard (CSA keyboard): Right Ctrl+⇧ Shift+R
- US international keyboard and UK extended keyboard layouts: AltGr+⇧ Shift+R (subject to OS support).
- Microsoft Windows: Alt+0174 (on numeric keypad)
- Mac OS: ⌥ Option+R
- Linux: ComposeOR
- Linux and Chrome OS: Ctrl+⇧ Shift+U then AEspace
- HTML:
®
or®
- Emacs: C-x8R
- LaTeX:
\textregistered
in text mode.\circledR
in text or math mode (requires amsfonts package)
Related and similar symbols[edit]
- The trademark symbol, ™, used for unregistered trademarks
- The service mark symbol, ℠, used for unregistered service marks
- The copyright symbol, ©
- The sound recording copyright symbol, ℗
- The Orthodox Union hechsher symbol, Ⓤ
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^ for example the Python programming language Trademark Usage Policy advocates this usage.[6]
- ^ Most word processors will autocorrect these two sequences to a proper ® symbol.
References[edit]
- ^ For example, "Intellectual property office". Government of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
- ^ a b "15 U.S.C. 1111". Retrieved 15 December 2005.
- ^ "Protecting your trade mark abroad". Government of the United Kingdom. 18 November 2019. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^ for example "Unregistered trade marks". Government of the United Kingdom. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
- ^ The Online Etymology Dictionary
- ^ "PSF Trademark Usage Policy".
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
- ^ https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf
- ^ The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0, C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement (PDF). Mountain View, CA: Unicode Consortium. 2016. pp. 0080–00FF. ISBN 978-1-936213-13-9.