Registered trademark symbol (®)

How to read it

The US Patent and Trademark Office says the ® is used once a trademark is registered with it, and only with the goods or services listed in the registration; before that, owners use ™ or SM. US law, 15 U.S.C. § 1111, lets a registrant give notice with the words “Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office”, the abbreviation “Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.”, or “the letter R enclosed within a circle, thus ®”. In the UK, the government’s guidance says a registered owner can put the ® next to the brand “to show that it’s yours and warn others against using it”. Unicode encodes it as U+00AE REGISTERED SIGN, which Unicode 1.0 called “registered trade mark sign”. This page describes the mark and is not legal advice.

Also searched as: ®, registered symbol, registered trademark symbol meaning, registered trademark symbol symbol, r in a circle.

What the notice does in the US

Under 15 U.S.C. § 1111, a registrant who gives no notice of registration can recover no profits and no damages in an infringement suit unless the defendant actually knew of the registration. The USPTO adds that it is not an enforcement agency, so owners pursue infringers themselves. Most owners set the ® in superscript or subscript to the right of the mark, the USPTO says, though it may go anywhere around it.

The ® on an unregistered mark in the UK

Section 95 of the UK Trade Marks Act 1994 makes it an offence to represent falsely that a mark is registered, and counts the word “registered” or any symbol referring to registration as such a representation, unless the mark is in fact registered elsewhere for those goods or services. The penalty is a fine on summary conviction.

Look-alikes

The Copyright symbol (©) symbol © is a C in a circle and marks a copyright claim. The trademark symbol ™ claims a mark without saying it is registered. Unicode separates ® from the circled latin capital letter R, Ⓡ (U+24C7).