xxx is a trademark of yyy - (nf)

[johnl at ima.UUCP]

#R:watmath:-542300:ima:20400010:000:916
ima!johnl    Jun 24 15:10:00 1983

The R in a circle means that a trademark is registered with the trademark
office, whereas TM means that you claim it as a trademark but haven't
registered it.

There is some arcane difference between the two that I don't understand.
Registration isn't necessary to defend a trademark, you just have to be
able to prove that you've tried to identify it as a trademark, which is
why on the back of each genuine Band-Aid brand bandaid it says "Band-Aid
is a trademark."

Then again, there's the recent Monopoly (the board game) case in which a
court held that what's important is that the public associate the trade
name with the manufacturer, and since few know who makes Monopoly games,
it's not a trademark.  Seems to me that under that logic, "computer" is a
trademark of IBM.  Maybe "telephone" is a trademark of AT&T.  Jeez.

John Levine, ima!johnl

PS:  Let's move this to net.misc, if there's further interest.