Talk:Service mark
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A service mark and a trade mark are not the same. A Service mark is used for services rather than goods. A Trademark is to identify goods and to distinguish those goods from those made or sold by another.
I put them on one line! What are the requirements for a word to be claimed as a servicemark? For instance, can I servicemark the phrase "I am" and then claim that anyone advertising using the phrase "I am" infringes my copyright?? 84.249.192.100 11:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Some Guidelines about service marks:
Trademark law is generally used to refer to rights relating to both trademarks and service mark, just to create a shorthand. Similarly, you may see the word "trademark" used to collectively to refer to both trademarks and services marks when talking about the law.
A service mark is used to distinguish the source of services from those made and sold by another. Both rights in trademarks and service marks are created by use in commerce. You can demonstrate use of a service by advertising, but beware that merely including the mark as part of content on a Web page won't necessarily suffice. The mark truly needs to be associated with the sale of a service. For example, the mark "I AM" used on a purely informational blog site to post content about yourself would not allow you to exclude others from using I AM under trademark law. The mark I AM used in connection with services used in commerce(for example, marketing services) might be protected under trademark law provided that someone has not previously used the mark or a confusingly similar one for similar services. You could get trademark rights to I AM used for marketing consulting services if someone else was using the mark I AM for healthcare services, since no one would be confused into thinking that the source of the two services was the same.
A bit about types of marks: Service marks and trademarks can't be merely descriptive of what the services (or goods) actually are. So "I AM" could actually get service mark status to describe consulting services because the phrase is arbitrary and has no real connection to consulting services. That doesn't mean someone could no longer write the words "I am" because you were using I AM as a service mark, it just means that you would have rights to stop someone from marketing the same type of consulting services under the mark, "I AM."
When you're talking about copyrights, that's a different beast. Copyrights don't require use in commerce, just original expression fixed in a tangible medium (e.g., on a piece of paper, in an electronic form, etc.) But there has to be some degree of original expression (very minimal, but still some) which is why such a short phrase like "I am" could not obtain copyright protection and why data in a phone book, for example, can't obtain copyright protection unless it's presented in a very original way.
