What Do the Symbols ©, ®, and ™ Mean?

Overview

© stands for Copyright, meaning “all rights reserved” or “copyright protected.”

® stands for Registered, meaning “registered,” and is usually used for registered trademarks.

™ stands for Trademark, meaning “trademark.” It indicates that the relevant text, graphic, or symbol is being used as a trademark, but it may not necessarily be registered.

Details

® is the symbol for a “registered trademark.” It means that the trademark has been submitted to the competent authority for registration, reviewed, and approved as a registered trademark. The R inside the circle comes from the English word registered or register.

Registered trademarks usually have characteristics such as exclusivity, sole ownership, and uniqueness. They belong to the owner of the registered trademark and are protected by law. No company or individual should use them without the permission or authorization of the registered trademark owner, otherwise they may bear liability for infringement.

™ is the trademark symbol. Text, graphics, or symbols marked with ™ indicate that they are being used as trademarks, but they may not necessarily be registered. The scope of protection for unregistered trademarks differs from that of registered trademarks, and should be determined according to local law and the actual registration status.

In the Chinese context, ™ is often used to indicate that a trademark application has been submitted to the National Trademark Office and that a Notice of Acceptance has been received, placing it into the subsequent examination or opposition process. This can remind others not to file a duplicate application, and also indicates that the existing trademark holder is claiming priority of use.

TM is the abbreviation of the English word trademark.

Input

In HTML

In HTML, you can directly use entity characters:

&copy;   <!-- © -->
&reg;    <!-- ® -->
&trade;  <!-- ™ -->
&#8482;  <!-- ™ -->

Here, &#8482; is the numeric character reference for ™. It is recommended to include the closing semicolon to avoid compatibility issues in different browsers or parsing environments.

You can also display TM in superscript form:

<sup>TM</sup>

Or define a superscript style with CSS:

<style>
.textSuper {
  font-size: 8px;
  vertical-align: super;
}
</style>

<span class="textSuper">TM</span>

In Dreamweaver, you can insert it through “Insert Panel => Characters => ™”.

Other Input Methods

  1. Use images to represent ©, ®, and ™.
  2. In QQ Wubi Input Method, find ©, ®, and ™ through “Settings => Symbols => Special Symbols”.
  3. In Word, insert ©, ®, and ™ through “Insert => Symbol => Special Symbols”.

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