Can Acronyms be Trademarked?

Business
1

Lets say for example Everybody Loves Raymond was referred to by ELR by the network and by everybody else.

Does that acronym now become trademarked also?

Can you trademark an Acronym?

2

IANAL … but that’s what I understand

not automatically

Can you trademark an Acronym?

Sure, e.g. IBM
You can search them here: www.uspto.gov

IIRC, you cannot trademark a number. That’s why after everybody was making chips called 286, 386, 486 … Intel decided the new chips should have a name, not a number. so, the 586 was named “Pentium”

3

Sure. You can trademark any combination of letters. But you have to apply for trademarks - they are not automatic. Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service) is trademarked. In your example ELR could be trademarked to prevent other TV shows using it in their name but it wouldn’t prevent others in other industries from calling themselves or their products ELR.

4

But wouldn’t it be not just the letters but how the “mark” is made?

For example IBM has many marks of “IBM” TM’d

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=vc5h4j.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=IBM&p_tagrepl~%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query

5

You can file as many trademarks for as many letters, words, or phrases for as
many applicable categories as money can buy. :slight_smile:

Your next challenge afterwards is to protect and enforce each and every one
of those trademark rights, though. And that ain’t cheap. :smiley:

And sure you can trademark an acronym. Aside from IBM, AOL is another.

Many parties can even trademark the same acronym for their own respective
specific uses, as long as they don’t overlap or infringe one another.