Trademark

A trademark is a unique identifier of a particular business or organization. Trademarks can be design marks, where certain graphical elements in combination create a unique brand identifier, or word marks, where a combination of letters is used to denote a particular business or a slogan that has acquired distinctive and particular meaning for a specific business. A trademark does not need to be registered to acquire legal protections, but the brand recognition and goodwill associated with a company's marks gain a much higher level of protection through registration.