registered trademark ® | ||
The registered trademark symbol (®) is a symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company or product. Notwithstanding the symbol doesn't meet the threshold of originality to be protected by copyright because it consists only in a capital letter rounded by a simple geometric shape, in some countries it is against the law to use the registered trademark symbol for a mark that is not officially registered in any country.
Contents
Trademarks not officially registered can instead be marked with the trademark symbol ™, while unregistered service marks are marked with the service mark symbol ℠. The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark, and is commonly in superscript style but is not legally required.
Computer usage
The registered trademark character has a standardized representation in most computer systems. It is mapped in Unicode as U+00AE ® Registered sign (HTML ® · ®). The registered trademark symbol ® is distinct, in computer representation, from the similar character U+24C7 Ⓡ Circled Latin capital letter R (enclosed R)
Because the ® symbol has not commonly been available on typewriters and ASCII-based computer systems, it has been common to approximate this symbol with the characters (R) (or (r)); for example, the Python programming language Trademark Usage Policy advocates this usage. Example of legal equivalents are the phrase Registered, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which may be abbreviated to Reg U.S. Pat & TM Off., in the U.S., and the letters RTM in the UK.
Typing character
® or ® or ®. extregistered in text mode.circledR in text or math mode (requires amsfonts package)