Trademark is an intellectual property right that safeguards certain symbols, words etc of a firm from being misused by others. The main objective of trademarks is to make sure that the consumers are not subjected to any confusion in relation to the origin of the product.

A trademark must be unique and distinct enough for the customers to identify it easily even amongst a crowd of similar products in the market. This distinctiveness of trademarks is recognized by dividing them into four essential categories – descriptive, suggestive, arbitrary or fanciful, and generic.

A descriptive mark is representative of the essential quality or some other features of the product like its utility or size. Although a few descriptive marks that have acquired a secondary meaning in the marketplace, which the consumers can identify as originating from a particular source, can be trademarked, this is not the usual case as descriptive marks are rarely exclusive.

Suggestive marks are pointers towards a particular product aspect or quality. However, customers might need to stretch their imagination to identify the real link between the product and the mark as there is no evident connection between the two. For example, ‘Hush Puppies’ is a famous brand name that markets shoes that guarantee comfort and prevent soreness of your feet. The prime reason behind such a name is that ‘barking dogs’ is slang for sore feet in some places in America.

Arbitrary marks are those marks that do not have any link whatsoever with the commodity itself. For example, the use of trademark ‘Apple’ with a logo of a half bitten apple is not at all related to the computers sold under the mark. Similarly, arbitrary marks are those that come from the creative imagination of the manufacturer or come from classical languages like Latin and Greek.

Finally, the category of generic marks clearly identifies the goods, like ‘sports wear’, and they cannot be given any trademark protection due to lack of distinctiveness.

Discover more about Trademarks and learn how does an Patents protection increase the net worth of your business very fast. Don’t reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.