"Copy Protection" - Trademark It
Thursday, November 22, 2007PAUL KANGAS, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT ANCHOR: There's another form of protected intellectual property that is easy to recognize -- the trademark. Unlike copyrights and patents, trademarks are intended mainly for consumer protection, designed to ensure that consumers understand which goods and services they are buying. They're also intended to encourage companies to invest in branding their products. As Diane Eastabrook reports, an established trademark can be very valuable.
DIANE EASTABROOK, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: From Charlie the tuna to Ronald McDonald, trademarks help connect consumers to specific products and services. Trademarks are more than catchy words, pictures or symbols. They are important because they represent a company's brand. Consumers often rely on a trademark to make sure they are getting that particular products and the quality they expect. Roberta Kwall is a professor of intellectual property law at Chicago's dePaul University. She says any business operating in today's competitive marketplace should have a registered trademark.
ROBERTA KWALL, LAW PROFESSOR, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY: Why? Because they want to be able to monopolize that particular information-rich signal for that genre of product.
EASTABROOK: Obtaining a trademark usually starts with a visit to an attorney who will conduct a trademark search. Ladas and Parry trademark attorney Marc Trachtenberg says a computer search often takes only a few hours. That involves combing state and Federal registries to see if anyone else has registered that particular word, picture or symbol. If nobody has, then the company can apply for that trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. If firms want trademark protection in other countries, they must register there as well. But Trachtenberg says, sometimes that is a problem.
MARC TRACHTENBERG, ATTORNEY, LADAS & PARRY LLP: Information travels so quickly around the world that it's very easy for someone in another country to get online and do a simple search of the Internet and see what brands are popular in the U.S. or other countries and to either preemptively register that trademark in that country or simply start making counterfeit goods.
EDWARD SMITH, MANAGER, GLOBAL BRAND INTEGRATION, CATERPILLAR: The whole decal, if you will, the coloration is literally an identity for Cat machines.
EASTABROOK: Edward Smith, Caterpillar's manager of global brand integration, says trademark protection is a top priority at the Peoria, Illinois, based firm. The company not only trademarks its Cat logo, but also the yellow color that all of its earth-moving vehicles are painted. Caterpillar has sold tractors and trucks in nearly every corner of the world for decades. Recently, it added shoes, clothing and toys bearing the Cat logo to its lineup. Smith says the Cat trademark represents durability and Caterpillar will challenge anyone who uses it illegally.
SMITH: You make a promise and if someone else emulates that promise and passes their product off as ours, then it breaks that promise and we will protect that to the Nth degree.
EASTABROOK: Experts say the Internet is a growing source of trademark misuse. Typo-squatting is one example. It happens when someone registers a variation or a misspelling of a brand name as a domain name. Then, consumers who accidentally enter the wrong name might be directed to a competitor's site or face a barrage of advertisements. Alan Drewsen, executive director of the International Trademark Association, says preventing this type of deception is difficult.
ALAN DREWSEN, EXEC. DIR., INTERNATIONAL TRADEMARK ASSN: Generally, the brand owners have to be very alert policing the net all the time and trying to identify and then get back these domain names that the typo-squatters or cyber- squatters have no right to in the first place.
EASTABROOK: A successful trademark can become one of a company's most valuable properties and since a trademark can have a huge influence on a consumer's buying decisions, experts say trademark protection is still as important today as it was a century ago. Diane Eastabrook, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Chicago.
