trademarks

A trademark is a brand identification for a product or service, the latter technically called a "service mark." The mark can be written text, text in a particular stylized form or a graphic symbol. Company names and products are often registered with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Organization (USPTO) to help ensure their legal usage. For more information, visit www.uspto.gov.

We Are Not a Source of Trademark Registrations
The purpose of this Encyclopedia is to provide a meaningful definition of computer science, telecommunications, semiconductor and electronics terms and related products, but it is not meant to be a source of trademark registration information. When we know of an origin of a term, we state it. There are thousands of terms in this database that do not include a lineage, because we either did not know of it at the time of writing or felt it was not pertinent.

We Believe Everything Is a Trademark
We believe that every name of a product is a trademark of its respective organization. If a company creates a name for its product and continues to use it, it is a de facto trademark whether or not it is registered. Among other legal reasons, registration serves to officially document how long a name has been in use.

Contact the Company
If a particular technology in this database is attributed to an organization, we do not know if it is a de facto or de jure trademark of that organization. To find out trademark information about a product in this publication, please contact the legal counsel of the organization that is mentioned as its creator. See copyright.