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by Jason Fischer

Trademarks are a huge part of everyone’s daily lives; yet the laws that dictate their use and abuse are not nearly as well known.  A single trip to the grocery store may expose you to literally thousands of trademarks.  There are the ones you expect to see (e.g., the word “Kellogg’s” on that box of cereal, or that jovial peanut wearing a top hat) and the ones you are hardly even aware of (e.g., the emblem on the front of the car that you parked next to in the lot, or that familiar swoosh on the sneakers of the woman behind you in the checkout line).  Each of those words or symbols represents an important mechanism for lubricating the wheels of commerce, providing a shortcut for you (or your intended customer) to make informed purchase decisions.  The economic advantage of trademarks lies in their ability to quickly convey, by association, a wealth of information about the quality, value, and reputation of a product, or its producer.

As an example, when someone goes shopping for clothing, they are able to quickly pick out which garments are desirable, and which ones are not, simply by looking at the tag or emblem stitched on the left breast.  If you see a silhouette of a man riding on a horse and swinging a polo mallet, you immediately know something about the characteristics of that shirt, whether it’s from your own experience or from what you may have heard from other satisfied purchasers.  You know a little something about the quality and whether it falls into your intended price range – all without having to spend the time, effort, and expense of buying one of each brand of shirt and conducting your own comparative analysis.  You know, before even opening it, that when you take a sip from that can that has “Coca-Cola” printed on it, it will taste a certain way, and you likely made your purchase (or selected the one with “Pepsi” printed on it instead) based on that knowledge.

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