Referring to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), “A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.”

Quite a number of famous companies have trademarks that are easily recognizable. These companies have spent a large sum over the years in various branding exercises to make certain that their trademarks are conveniently associated with whatever services or items they supply or produce. After all that hard work and investment, many corporations are not too amused when they discover that their trademarks are being duplicated and used to garner profit by others without a hint of regret.

When a corporation learns that its trademark is being illegally used by others, it would normally contact its intellectual property lawyers or trademark lawyers to seek the next course of action. The trademark lawyers would initially send a trademark infringement letter to the accused. If that fails to stem the infringement then a trademark infringement litigation would ordinarily be filed. If the trademark infringement litigation is successful, then the plaintiff should certainly expect remedies to be awarded other than the halting of infringement.

There are usually 4 means to invite a trademark infringement litigation. For starters, a mark could be blatantly infringed. This usually involves fake products which are tagged and packed just like the originals.

Next, some offenders are a little more sly and could possibly make variations to the mark with the idea to confuse the public and maybe avert a trademark infringement litigation.

Some perpetrators can end up diluting your mark by relating it with other merchandise. For instance, Ferrari is associated with speed. A cleaning company could come along and use the mark to signify fast cleaning service.

And lastly, with the absence of any bad intent, a corporation could use a mark in such a way that it sounds or looks almost the same as the original. This could be due to insufficient research and generally affects domain names and tag lines. Even though no harm was intended does not mean their actions are not foul of the law. These violators still risk a trademark infringement litigation.

There are many kinds of intellectual property infringements aside from trademark infringements. Some of the most common are copyright and patent infringements. Therefore it would not be a shock to chance upon news on trademark infringement litigation and patent infringement letter everyday.

Intellectual property owners are advised to always engage specialist lawyers to deal with specific cases. For example, a copyright infringement lawyer should be hired to handle copyright infringement cases.