Trademark Laws
There are millions of companies in The United States and many of them own registered trademarks. A trademark is any sort of specific image that is put on products or property to prove ownership by the person, business or organization that owns the trademark. Trademark laws protect the trademark owners from another party stealing or using their trademark in any way shape or form. Trademark laws are strict and there is zero tolerance when it comes to using a registered trademark.
A trademark can be taken away from its owner if the courts find that it is not being used properly. Trademark laws suggest that after a trademark is officially registered, rightful ownership of that trademark is based on identification. If a individual or business is constantly using their trademark to identify themselves on their products or property, than trademark law allows the owner to maintain ownership. However, if courts find that an owner of a registered trademark is allowing other parties to use their trademark, trademark law allows a judge to remove ownership of that particular trademark. If a party does not care about the status of their trademark and whether or not it is being used to identify the owning party or in any other way, than trademark laws permit the right of courts to take the trademark away.
Trademark law also allows ownership of a trademark to be removed if the trademark becomes too generic. A specific case where that happened was when a company lost it’s right to own it’s own word. Cellophane was originally the name of a specific type of clear plastic paper. However, over time, the trademark word cellophane started being used for all types of that clear plastic wrapping. Eventually trademark law allowed that trademark to be taken away from it’s original owner because the word became too generic.
Similar to the goals of copyright law, trademark law declares ownership and gives rights to its legal owner. Trademark law has forced a lot of law suits over right and wrongful uses of certain trademarks. Many professional organizations such as sports teams and music bands as well as large companies such as banks have had many law suits filled by and against them due to trademark laws. These laws are what protect the rights of their owners. These laws have been interpreted in many different ways because of debate on what is wrongful use of a trademark and what is rightful use of a trademark. Lawyers on both sides have interpreted these laws in abstract and ambiguous ways. This is why we have judges.