Trademark

Trademark is a sign which can differentiate a product or service from its competitors. The trademark may also be referred to as the 'brand.' It can be a word or a logo or even a combination of both. For example, there are lots of biscuits on the market, but KitKat is a trademark, which clearly seperates it from the others on the shelf. 
The majority of products and services are covered by something known as 'ordinary' trade marks. These marks work to show the trade origin which basically means they link the owner of the trademark to the products or services and the products or services to the owner.


Acceptable Trademarks:
-Invented words are the most distinctive. e.g. hangil
-An invented word together with a description of the product or service. e.g. hangil windows.
-A word that is not assosiated with the obvious product or service. e.g Dogtooth Finance. This is acceptable for financial servies, however the word 'Dogtooth' would not be acceptable for textiles or fashion as it is the name of a pattern.


Unacceptable Trademarks:    
-24 hours a day: These hours are used by many traders to advertise that their products or services are avaliable 24 hours a day.
-Some slogans are so popular that they are often not distinctive enough and are therefore unacceptable for a trademark.


Starbucks is a registered trademarked coffee house which is well known globally. Some companies copy famous logos, tweaking them slightly to make it their own. However most copies are blatantly ripping off a trademark which if taken seriously can result in the business being sued. 

This coffee shop logo is a blatant copy of the Starbucks logo.
(below)






















There are certain obvious changes that Kaldi's coffee shop has made so that they can suggest they haven't copied the Starbucks logo. For example, the typeface is different, they have a different logo in the centre, the stars have been changed to circles and the green is a slightly different shade. Making a number of changes like this makes the logo different enough for it not to be an infringement.