Anything that identifies your company’s products and services and distinguishes them from the products and services of other companies can potentially be a trademark. The two most common are words that serve as brands and logos that include some type of pictorial design. The proper subject matter for trademarks includes much more than these, however, and may include slogans, letter acronyms, unique color combinations, container shapes and packaging features, configurations of products themselves, sounds, and scents. Even this list is not exhaustive. If there is some indicia that your company uses to uniquely identify its products or services, it has the potential of being a protectable trademark.

It is more difficult to obtain protection from some types of identifiers compared to others. For example, various color combinations or patterns have long been recognized as being a protectable trademark. More recently, protection has been extended to the use of a single unique color for a product, but establishing that a single product color merits protection for exclusive use by one company remains more difficult than establishing rights to other types of marks. Similarly, the exterior visual design or shape of a product or piece of equipment, or at least the nonfunctional features of that shape, can be established in the right circumstances as a trademark for that product. Establishing trademark rights in the shape of a product itself is normally more difficult than establishing rights in a unique packaging design, for example. Under the right circumstances, however, these can represent extremely valuable proprietary rights of a company.

If you have questions about trademarks, contact our Michigan IP attorneys today at (616) 975-5500.