the.com/trademark
Not your idea — your identity, legally armed to sue lookalikes.
means A word, name, symbol, or design legally registered to identify a company's goods and stop others from using anything confusingly similar.
from From 'mark' meaning a sign or symbol, long used by craftsmen to stamp their goods — medieval guilds required artisans to mark their wares so shoddy work could be traced back to the maker. 'Trade' was added to specify commerce, giving English 'trademark' by the 1800s, right as mass manufacturing made it newly urgent to tell one maker's goods from a rival's copycat.
- not a patent
- protects brand identity, not invention
- forever-ish
- renewable indefinitely if you keep using it
- color counts
- tiffany blue and UPS brown are trademarked
- use it or lose it
- abandon it, anyone can claim it