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Unregistered trade mark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An unregistered trade mark is a trademark which does not benefit from the protection afforded to trade marks through registration.
They may however benefit from protection due to other features of the law in relation to trademarks, such as for instance the protection for unregistered marks in the United Kingdom resulting from Passing off law.
In the United States, registration, both federal or state, is not required to obtain rights in a trademark. An unregistered mark may still receive common law trademark rights. Those rights, for example, may extend to its area of influence--usually delineated by geography. As such, multiple parties may simultaneously use a mark throughout the country or even state.