I was trying to help out in information on some Lilies in the database. Zuzu made the indication that the name Lily Looks is not a tradename or trademark.

Here is one of the photos I Tee-Mailed her regarding why I had submitted the Lilies as being trademarked as Lily Looks. This is a photo from a page from my wholesale commercial supplier:


Zuzu feels that I am confused about trademarks and tradenames, and I probably am. I hate to keep bothering her with this as I know she is busy, and I know she is concerned about the other moderators of forums, and their time consumption. Because I often have catalogs from wholesale suppliers, I *thought* they should be a good source of correctly trademarked names, series of plants, and patent numbers.

I went online to search to find out what a "trademark" is, and found this, and I quote it. "You cannot trademark a plant. Trademarks only apply to a name, logo, or slogan that you use to promote or sell products or services." Thus, by this definition, Lily Looks is the name, logo or slogan, of a line of lilies and could be trademarked. ?? How would one be 100% sure it is or isn't trademarked? Is there a database or trademarks or trade names?

Anyone else with a good understand of Trademarks, especially in the plant world, would you please help me out? Thanks!! . . . I don't want to cause the moderators any extra work.

Never mind this question, if it can be closed that is good. To help anyone else out, (®) is the indication of a Trademark, and not the use of TM as I had thought.

If that's the case, what does the TM refer to?

Well, I asked the same question, and here's what I found:

"What is the TM symbol?

The (TM) symbol is for all other trademarks that are not registered, they must not be associated with the R-symbol. Doing so can evoke penalties from the USPTO if you eventually try to register your trademark, or if you try to defend against potential infringers. Instead, use the TM symbol in place of the R-symbol, until your trademark is registered. It provides notice to would-be infringers that you view your mark as a trademark, and that you will defend it against would-be infringers."

Ok, very strange, but thanks!

Now I'm back to questioning if Lily Looks should be listed as Trademarked as I had submitted all the Tiny series as being?
Obviously my supplier considers the name so, but I can't call them until tomorrow. I know for my own business, it took two (2) years for the government to get back my registration papers. If it takes that long to get a *registered* trademark, it's no wonder a company would begin selling with a TM before they can ever classify with the (®) .

I also found this:
"The owner of a trademark may pursue legal action against trademark infringement. Most countries require formal registration of a trademark as a precondition for pursuing this type of action. The United States, Canada and other countries also recognize common law trademark rights, which means action can be taken to protect an unregistered trademark if it is in use. Still, common law trademarks offer the holder in general less legal protection than registered trademarks."

™ (the "trademark symbol", which is the letters "TM" in superscript, for an unregistered trademark, a mark used to promote or brand goods)
℠ (which is the letters "SM" in superscript, for an unregistered service mark, a mark used to promote or brand services)
® (the letter "R" surrounded by a circle, for a registered trademark)

Tsflowers, this is all great info, and I don't doubt any of it.
But when such easily misunderstood specifics are involved, could you reveal your source, please?

I hope it is not a blog, or even Wikipedia. (Wikipedia has improved leaps and bounds since in the last 10 years, but there is still tons of bad info out there.)

@Leftwood My source is my commercial wholesale supplier; a photo above from their catalog. I sometimes like to keep certain things private. Now the places I quoted from do include Wikipedia as I myself was trying to learn exactly what a Trademark was. It doesn't matter anyway. I was trying to help and enter what I believed to be legitimate information with respect to the LILY LOOKS Tiny series-named lilies. And so what, it's no big deal *if* LILY LOOKS is LILY LOOKS™, it's probably really not that important that it's entered into the database here at NGA.

I have to applaud anyone who wants to know the real facts about any subject, and is willing to make a real effort to do so. Bravo!

Hi Teresa! I believe what actually happened was you submitted Lily Looks as a trade name. When a plant has a trade name then that name appears instead of the cultivar name. If there is a series name, then that appears before the trade name. So for example, If Tiny is entered as a series name and Lily Look as the trade name then it will come up in the database as Tiny Lily Looks for all of the Tiny lilies.

I know it is confusing and I was spending a lot of time researching the situation when zuzu saw the problem and thought best to remove the proposals before we mods came along and botched things up. .

My best resource for this sort of thing is our authority on lily names, the RHS International Lily Register and Checklist(2007) and its supplements. I have found very few lilies that actually have a trade name. If there is a trade name it will be included in the registration. You can find lily names in this register which is located via a link in a sticky at the top of the Lily Forum.

So it is probably just best to leave that extra information out of proposals. As a moderator I will look a lily up to see if it is registered and if it has a trade name as well as any other information I can add to the data.

I wanted to say I should have stuck with my first thought, or to do, and that was just add the patent information. But then, in one way, not for any that it caused any extra work, but for myself, I ended up learning from the whole matter. I had no idea what ™ or ® meant and how they worked.

So honestly, I really didn't have a good idea what I was doing in respect to the TM and especially entering it in the database.

For instance now, in perusing the catalog, I see a series of Dianthus. They are all patented, and I didn't see the first one I looked up in the database. These are the Scent First® Series:
trade name = Coconut Surprise
trade name = Passion
trade name = Romance
trade name = Sugar Plum / how does one find the "cultivar name"? Is it usually the same, or different from the trade name.

So then I looked at Echinacea Sundown, which is the Big Sky™ Series, to see it's entry in the database. I see how I totally had things messed up in entering the data for the lilies. And @pardalinum you are correct in that it's probably best that I just leave that information out, or notify zuzu of my thoughts with respect to that information, and the moderators can take it from there.

Also , @pardalinum , I did look in the register here:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/...
I didn't find any of the Tiny lilies there. Was this the wrong link to look?

Registrations for the Tiny lilies are post 2007 so you have to search the four supplements.

I'll try to answer all of your questions. If I leave any out, please ask again. First of all, Lily Looks is the trademarked name of a collection of Lilium series introduced by a company in the Netherlands that specializes in pot lilies. It is not the trade name of any specific cultivar. It's comparable to a company such as Macy's®. The store name is copyrighted, but that name is not the trade name of each item sold at Macy's.

TsFlowers said:To help anyone else out, (®) is the indication of a Trademark, and not the use of TM as I had thought.

This is incorrect. ® is the copyright symbol, not the trademark symbol. ™ is the trademark symbol.

The Tiny series is not a trade series because the name Tiny is not followed by a copyright or trademark symbol. The plants of the Tiny "series" therefore have only cultivar names, not trade series names and trade names.

If the "Tiny" were followed by a trademark or copyright symbol, the rest of the name would be the trade name. The Tiny Ghost cultivar, for example, would be divided into the series name (Tiny) and the trade name (Ghost). In that case, the cultivar name would be different from the trade name.

The cultivar names of trade names can be difficult to find. Some companies always list the cultivar name, so the task is easy if the plant is carried by Proven Winners or Monrovia, for instance, or if it's listed on the Learn2Grow website. I find many cultivar names on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's lists of plants. Here's the Impatiens list, for example. The cultivar names are listed in bold, followed by the trade names in parentheses.

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/en...

When we're unable to find the cultivar name, we repeat the series and trade name (without the copyright or trademark symbol) on the cultivar line as a space saver. The entry subsequently is edited after we find the correct cultivar name.

zuzu said:When we're unable to find the cultivar name, we repeat the series and trade name (without the copyright or trademark symbol) on the cultivar line as a space saver. The entry subsequently is edited after we find the correct cultivar name.

How then, is a reader to know that the series and trade name is not also the cultivar name? If you need a place holder, wouldn't "unknown" (or something similar) be more appropriate and accurate?

There must be something you're not mentioning (in the interest of brevity, no doubt) that gives some logic to this action......

You ask how a reader is to know that the series and trade name is not also the cultivar name. Does it really matter? I don't think most readers care whether the trade name is the same as the cultivar name, and it sometimes is the same.

The true cultivar name can be important to the database admins. Sometimes a series of plants is given a new trademarked series name or trade names by a different company. In those cases, the matching cultivar names let us know that the new name should be treated only as an "also-sold-as" name and does not warrant a new entry.

The system will not process a new plant proposal unless a genus and cultivar are listed. That is why we use the trade name as a place saver for the cultivar name. Using "Unknown" as a place holder would be pointless. We would then have thousands of cultivars named 'Unknown' in our database. It's more useful to use unique cultivar names, different for each plant. Until we know the true cultivar name, we use a place saver that is similar to the trade name, lacking only the copyright or trademark symbol, to aid in database searches.

If it was also the cultivar name it would be in single quotes.

zuzu said:

This is incorrect. ® is the copyright symbol, not the trademark symbol. ™ is the trademark symbol.

I've been away for awhile. I actually had my website copyrighted with the federal government. It's not something that a web owner has to do, because it's standard law that photos and web design of the owner is protected under copyright. But I had it done anyway. The copyright symbol is © If you check with an attorney, I think you will find out that the ® is for "registered" trademark.

Perhaps since Dave @Dave is in business, he is familiar with the symbols.

I may not be back again for awhile. Best regards to all!!