Fewer service marks and trademarks are the same, but the service mark helps distinguish the service provided by different companies or service providers. The service marks are categorized in five ways and under which categories it falls determines their strength. 

Fanciful marks are considered the most vital marks obtained and have the greatest protection. Generic categories service marks are never considered for trademark protection. Here is an example of a service mark about the plumbing company. The logo of the company has a leaking wrench and faucet to recognize that company, so that logo is used to identify the service office of the company in the plumbing sector.

Fanciful Marks:

For the trademark, mark protection goes for the fanciful marks as it’s solely invented to serve a trademark and they may not have any meaning or role but repercussions of a service from a brand. The best example of these is Pepsi and Kodak. 

Arbitrary Marks:

Arbitration Marks required the strong protection of registration. The words are commonly used in day-to-day life but give a distinguishing mark to the service and products provided by the business or the organization. The best example of this would be the brand ‘Apple’. In common apple denotes a fruit but in terms of business, it shows personal computers.

Suggestive Marks:

In suggestive marks, the public determines what kind of service or products are given by the organization as it is quite a play around in words. For example, the word ‘Frankwurst’ means frank, and wurst means wieners and sausages, when placed next to each other it gives a different meaning.

Descriptive Marks:

In the descriptive marks the mark only descriptive words to determine what kind of service or product is given by the business. But it’s quite difficult to distinguish the product or service from the mark so the descriptive marks are not considered for the registration process. The descriptive mark gives a secondary meaning to the mark.

Generic Terms:

In generic terms, the product name cannot be used as a trademark as no product or service provider can have the exclusive right to the word. For example, an email will be the best one to explain this scenario.

About the service mark in India:

• In India, there is no separate law for the service mark as it comes under the Trademark Act. 1999, hence the TradeMark act is that granted the production of both the service and goods.
• The trade and merchandise marks act allows a business to register the trademark connected to the goods. The best protection for the service mark available in India is by the remedy against ‘passing off’.
• The 1999 Act definition of the trademark is capable of representing the mark graphically and knowing the distinguished service provided by businesses using the graphical representation.
• Under the 1999 Act the mark can be a signature, name, word, numeral, letter, brand, label, heading, ticket, drive, or combination of any of the above.

To safeguard your service mark along with your trademark contact experts in the field like Trade and Trade at Coimbatore or Tiruppur for the registration process, ensuring to safeguard the goods and service protection to be included in the trademark registration. We do all kinds of registration processes.