What an IP Coordinator should know: Something about trademarks
As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, David French, a senior Canadian patent attorney with 35 years of experience, now provides a further of his commentaries on the importance to a company of protecting its Intellectual Property.
By David French
In previous posts in this series we addressed mainly issues relating to patents. In this post we take a break from patents to discuss another very important type of Intellectual Property.
Intellectual Property has acquired this name because it is a type of property that is created by government-passed laws. Without legislation, the fundamental rule of the marketplace is that everyone is entitled to copy. But when someone copies trademark, there is an almost universal recognition that this is unjust. Besides being unjust, there are powerful economic justifications for suppressing the copying of trademarks by competitors.
Everyone has an impression as to what a “trademark” is. They think of Coca-Cola, or Heinz, or Heinz 57, or Kentucky Fried Chicken. The common thread of all trademarks is that when you see a mark you have a certain expectation about what you’re going to get. Although there are no rules forcing a trademark owner to market a consistent product under a trademark, there are powerful economic incentives for doing so.
