Many companies use other companies’ trademarks in advertising. For example, a company might want to advertise that its product is compatible with another company’s product, and so must identify that other company’s product by its brand name. While most companies are generally happy to have their brand names promoted by others (it is essentially free marketing for them) they also have an interest in protecting their valuable brand names against misuse. Many companies have trademark usage policies that they publish online. While each one varies according to the company’s own standards, most follow the same general principals and contain similar restrictions, such as requiring the third party to use the proper symbol (e.g. ® or ™), attribute ownership of the trademark to the company, and not in any way imply any sort of endorsement or obscure the third party brand names with its own.
Some companies, such as Twitter and even Microsoft, are fairly liberal when it comes to allowing others to use its trademarks. Microsoft, for example, permits third parties to use its word marks as long as such use is in accordance with Microsoft’s trademark usage policy. However, Microsoft requires third parties to contain specific permission before using any of Microsoft’s logos. Many other companies, on the other hand, such as Google, AOL, and Yahoo, are not so liberal and require permission before using any of their trademarks.
Accordingly, it is always a good idea to check a trademark owner’s requirements before using third party trademarks in connection with marketing your own products or services.
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Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson