From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri Jan 23 2009 - 12:06:00 CST
> De : unicode-bounce@unicode.org
> [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] De la part de James Cloos
> Envoyé : dimanche 18 janvier 2009 03:05
> À : Karl Pentzlin
> Cc : ALEX BLAISE; Unicode Mailing List
> Objet : Re: Proposed (MC) Marque de Commerce and/or (MD)
> Marque Depose?
>
>
> >>>>> "Karl" == Karl Pentzlin <karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de> writes:
>
> Karl> Am Donnerstag, 8. Januar 2009 um 18:27 schrieb ALEX BLAISE:
> AB> Has there is there currently a proposal submitted to
> implement (MC)
> AB> Marque de Commerce and/or (MD) Marque Depose superscript
> characters?
> AB> (MC) is the French equivalent for â„¢ and (MD) is the
> equivalent for
> AB> ®. I have not found any character combinations in the
> Pipeline Table or Code Charts.
>
> Perhaps the best solution is that either â„¢ tagged as fr
> should look like ᴹᶜ and ® tagged as fr like ᴹᴰ or ™ and ®
> followed by U+FE00 VARIATION SELECTOR-1 should do so?
>
> And similarily for other languages.
This makes no sense even in French; there's absolutely no known usage of the pseudo "French translation" of these symbols, and a superscript "MD" would mean absolutely nothing for almost everyone (except those that propose it). There's some very limited usage of superscript "TM" only for trademarks that have international registration (or trademarks used in Canada which is blilingual), but there's no need for even any symbol in France, where a trademark remains protected even in absence of this symbol. When a precision is wanted, it is displayed explicitly as "marque déposée" in a full sentence note within the document.
The sam is true for the circled R whose usage is very limited, and in fact is not very meaningful and not needed for the same reason. The presence or absence of such symbol is not discriminant for determining the allowed usage of the trademark (even for Generil terms usage as trademarks, see "Orange" for example in France, or its official web sites, where no symbol appears, and instead legal statements are used at the bottom of web pages, or in the "Informations éditeur" page (publisher information) whose reference is normally required within all electronic publications (including vocal services) : these "informations éditeurs" are very common even outside of France, they are required for all services that are providing commercial services with payment or billing, but also for some classes of services or for services that are reusing contents protected by copyright and they are used to specify the responsability of publishers.
It is not even needed for a publisher of service to specify which words are trademarks (the official trademark record is enough) if they have legitimate right on these marks. You don't even need to specify it if you are using them for designating products that you are selling and that were made by the original manufacturer, you just cide the product name.
So I've never seen any variant of those symbols in French documents, as they are not needed (so there's no need to translate them). The circled R or superscript TM are still usable and it is just used as a symbol that is not read as an abbreviation. In fact if someone used superscript MD or another circled letter, nothing would indicate its actual meaning and it would cause more confusion.
May be it will have some usage in bilingual Canada (where English is used and the symbols are readable as English abbreviations), but I think it is not even needed in Belgium (the other languages are Dutch and German, but not English), Luxembourg (the other recognized languages are German and Luxembourgish), Switzerland (the other languages are German, Italian and with a lower status Romansh): using a translated symbol would in fact produce more confusion as these countries would require multiple versions for the same trademarks with the same registration. IF a symbol is used, there will be a single one, and the "English" ones are just perfect for that, if they are really needed.
It looks like those supercript TM and circled R are just needed in USA, but I'm not even sure that they are required to offer a better protection of the trademark. Note however that in ench law, it's the responsability of a trademark holder to protect it against its usage as a generic term: after 5 years of usage as a common word without action by the trademark holder, its legal protection stops (it may be the motication for displaying the symbol sometimes to inform others that the term is protected, but even a registered trademark is not protecting all usages: the source of information is the official record that specifies the list of domains and regions where it has been protected, the size of this list determining the fee to pay to get the protection).
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