Hey everyone, its attorney Brian Russ coming at you with another 60 second Law Bite. This one is “what is a trademark?” It’s a question I get all the time, people call my office to say “Hey, can I copyright or patent or trademark this thing?” And so I’m doing a little series on: what is a trademark, what is patent, what is a copyright. A trademark is a type of intellectual property protection that helps identify the source of goods or services. And so the idea with a trademark is that if you have a company that’s producing, let’s say a chocolate chip cookie, but they want to make sure people know that it’s their chocolate chip cookie not somebody else’s, they’re going to go ahead and trademark their brand name. So maybe it’s going to be Crumbl Cookies or Famous Amos or Mrs. Field, right? They’re all selling a chocolate chip cookie, but they’re trademarking their names people know that it is it is that brands chocolate chip cookie, usually a trademark is a brand name or a logo. Sometimes you’ll see it as a slogan. I see it a lot in the food industry, right like if you think about your Taco Bell’s or McDonald’s, usually all their big sellers, those names are trademarks about the Big Mac or the Quarter Pounder, things like that. Those are big trademarks.