sb. [f. TRADE sb. + MARK sb.1] A mark (now, one secured by legal registration) used by a manufacturer or trader to distinguish his goods from similar wares of other firms; usually a distinctive device or figure, a fancy name or trade name, or the name of an individual or firm, marked or impressed on the article or upon the package, etc., in or with which it is sold.
[1571. Letters Patent to R. Matthews (in Edmunds, Patent Law [1897], 885). To make the said haftes called Turky haftes for knyves, and for his marke to haue vpon the blade and hafte of the same knyfes … a halfe Moone.]
1838. Mylne & Craig, Reports of Cases, III. 338. The Court will grant a perpetual injunction against the use, by one tradesman, of the trade marks of another.
1862. Act 25 & 26 Vict., c. 88 § 1. The Expression ‘Trade Mark’ shall include any … Name, Signature, Word, Letter, Device [etc.] … lawfully used by any Person to denote any Chattel, or (in Scotland) any Article of Trade [etc.] … to be an Article or Thing of the Manufacture … of such Person, or to be an Article or Thing or any peculiar or particular Description made or sold by such Person.
1880. Print. Trades Jrnl., XXXI. 26. The owl is the trade-mark of the firm.
b. fig. A distinctive mark or token.
1873. Browning, Red Cott. Nt.-Cap, 947. Trade-mark that stamps each word and deed.
1889. Doyle, Micah Clarke, 311. The trade mark upon your forehead is especially hard to overlook.
1898. Bodley, France, II. IV. vi. 406. Opportunists … utilised his name as the trade-mark of their parliamentary group.
c. attrib., as trade-mark name, registration.
1901. Daily Chron., 2 Dec., 7/1. A belated perambulator … with the trade-mark name of ‘The Prince of Wales.’
1909. Chem. & Druggist, 20 Feb., 315/2. Invented words should be protected by trade-mark registration; by themselves they cannot be copyrighted.
Hence Trade-mark v., trans. to affix or imprint a trade-mark upon; Trade-marking vbl. sb.
1904. D. Sladen, Lovers Japan, x. Bottled beer (made in Japan … and trade-marked with a big dragon).
1906. Westm. Gaz., 16 March, 5/2. The Bill … provided for the trade-marking of all imported beers.
