Trademarks
Know how to use our Trademarks, and use them.
Treefrog requires Frogs to always use trademark symbols when representing Treefrog, Treefrog-related businesses, or Treefrog products.
Current Treefrog Trademarks
| Canadian | US | |
|---|---|---|
| Treefrog® | TMA798126 | 4113847 |
| LEAP® | ||
| Lasso® | ||
| am.phibio.us® |
® vs ™
™ means a pending Trademark
® means a Registered Trademark
™ means you plan to register the trademark one day. If you “start” wanting to lay claim to the use of the mark, then you put the ™ after the name. You are effectively saying, “I have started the process of formally and legally registering this word or phrase for later usage”. Once you GET the formal trademark, you are obligated to start using ®.
When to use Trademarks
If your company name is the same as the mark (e.g. “Treefrog”), you would not include the mark in either form. Therefore, you should never see “Treefrog Inc. ®” as it is not the company name we registered, but rather, the word in reference to our services. If you use the word “Treefrog” in reference to the company, and somewhere on the page you see reference to “Treefrog Inc.”, it is probably clear to all that the word is not a “commonly used term”, but rather, one referring to the product of a company. In this case, Treefrog. Therefore, it is safe to not have any symbology on a page that explicitly references the company name as our competitors should take it as a sign that we control the word. This was not the case when we were “Treefrog Interactive”.
It does not hurt to protect ourselves wherever possible and use the registration mark wherever we use the word “Treefrog” in reference to our own products and services where we do not reference the full company name.
You can also use the footnote technique. Include a footnote at the bottom of the page after identifying the first word.
Treefrog is a registered trademark.
You can clarify the trademark in one of the following ways:
- The FIRST time the word appears without “Inc.”.
- ONCE on a page, the first time it appears, and then with a footnote.
- In bold, italics, or in CAPS with a footnote.
SEO Implications
“Treefrog” does not equal “Treefrog®” - it is a different word. Our site should carry the footnote, and NOT the trademark symbol.