Registered Trademark Character: Everything You Need to Know

Registered trademark character is a symbol used to indicate that the text, design, or mark is registered and hence cannot be used without proper authorization.3 min read

Registered trademark character is a symbol used to indicate that the preceding text, design, or mark is registered and hence cannot be used without proper authorization from the owner.

Trademark and Copyright Symbols

A trademark symbol notifies others about your claim on the trademark and its exclusive use. Usually, a trademark symbol is used in cases where the trademark is not yet registered; you just want others to know that you are using that trademark and will object if someone else uses it without your authorization. Just like a ™ symbol for trademark, the ? symbol is used for a service mark.

Owners of a registered trademark use the ® symbol to denote that a trademark is legally registered and protected. You cannot use this symbol for an unregistered trademark.

A superscript circled C or the © symbol is used to notify the public of your copyright claim over a certain piece of creative work. Copyright refers to the exclusive right to use and distribute an original work granted to its creator. Copyright is granted for a limited period time. It is a type of intellectual property, applicable to original creative work in various forms like songs, poems, books, plays, paintings, photographs, and computer graphics.

The symbol P or ? is used for audio works, which do not fall under the copyright. It is an abbreviation for the word phonogram.

Although there no hard and fast rules regarding placement of these symbols, they are usually placed at the top right corner of the trademark or protected content. The trademark symbol should be superscribed. If you wish to create this symbol in your own fonts, just type the letters TM and superscribe them in your software. Similarly, a circled R or ® represents a registered trademark. You can either superscribe it or place it on the baseline, but it should be slightly raised and reduced in size compared to the running content.

Inserting Trademark Symbols in Microsoft Office

You can insert a symbol using a keyboard shortcut. Just press and hold the Alt key with a certain numerical sequence:

  • Press Alt + 0153 to insert a trademark symbol: ™
  • Press Alt + 0174 to insert a registered mark symbol: ®
  • Press Alt + 0169 to insert a copyright symbol: ©

Note that you must use the numeric keypad in the Num Lock enabled mode. The numeric keys above the alphabets on the main keyboard won't work for this.

In Microsoft Office, there are two more options to insert these symbols:

  • You just need to type (tm), (r), or (c), and the auto correct functionality will automatically convert it into a symbol.
  • You can insert any of the symbols using Insert > Symbols from the menu in the Word document.

Inserting Trademark Symbols on a Mac

On a Mac, you can insert the trademark symbols using the following keys:

  • Type in Option + 2 for the ™ mark.
  • Type in Option + R for the ® mark.
  • Type in Option + G for the © symbol.

Inserting Trademark Symbols in HTML

Following are the shortcuts for trademark symbols in HTML programming:

  • For the ™ symbol, type in ™
  • For © symbol, type in ©
  • For ® symbol, type in ®

Alternatively, you can also use the following shortcuts:

  • ® for registered trademark symbol ®
  • ™ for trademark symbol ™
  •   for copyright symbol ©

Inserting Trademark Symbols Using Character Map

You can also insert trademark symbols using the character map:

  • Open the Windows search box.
  • Type in "character map".
  • Select the symbol from the pop-up menu.

Inserting Trademark Symbols in PDF

  1. Open the PDF document.
  2. Click on the Tools tab.
  3. Choose the edit option in the Tools Center.
  4. Open a Word document, and set the same font as in the PDF.
  5. Insert a trademark, registered mark, or a copyright symbol as needed in the Word document.
  6. style="display: block; border: medium none; height: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 617px; background-color: transparent; overflow: hidden; opacity: 0;">