Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Trademark
Incontrast tocopyrightsandpatents,
trademarks
areallaboutidentifying goodsinthemar-
ket and giving consumers' confidence in what they are buying (
Table 3.3
). If you have a
headache and run to the pharmacy in search of some painkillers, you want to be sure that
the bottle marked “Tylenol” actually came from the Tylenol people. Perhaps just as import-
ant, if you buy the Tylenol bottle and something goes wrong, it is important to know that
you could sue the Tylenol people for harming you. What is critical about trademark is that
it is a way for a manufacturer to identify itself in the marketplace.
Table 3.3
Trademark Tip Sheet
Trademark is also limited in important ways. At their core, copyrights and patents are
about copying or reproducing. Trademark law does not really care about copying for the
sake of copying. Rather, trademark law cares about using marks in commerce and confus-
ing consumers.
That means that not every use of a trademark qualifies as trademark infringement.
Using someone else's trademark in an attempt to pass off your product as theirs is trade-
mark infringement. But using someone else's trademark in a comparison or as a descriptor
is not trademark infringement.
For example, using the “Arduino” trademark on a microprocessor that I create myself
will be trademark infringement: A consumer might (wrongly) think that Arduino was be-
hind my microprocessor as well. In contrast, describing my microprocessor as “Arduino-
compatible” may not be trademark infringement. In this second example, I am using Ar-
duino's trademark to explain a feature of my own board, not to suggest that Arduino made
it. It would be pretty hard to tell a potential customer that my microprocessor is compat-
ible with Arduino without using the word “Arduino,” and the law recognizes that fact.
Similarly, I can use the Arduino trademark for comparison—“My microprocessor is five
times slower and ten times harder to use than Arduino”—without running into trademark
trouble.
Finally, the process of getting a trademark is something like an easier version of get-
ting a patent. You still need to apply for the trademark and fill out forms, but the process
will probably be easier and faster than a patent application. You may still need to hire a
