That's really the main thing you need to know about trademarks: they’re valuable. In 2011 Forbes attempted to value some of the most famous trademarks, and declared the multi-coloured Google logo to be the world’s most valuable, pricing it at $44.3 billion, or 27 percent of the company's then-value. Trademarking a logo legally protects it in the same way that a patent protects an invention. Brands spend lots of time and money nurturing these positive associations, so they get their logos trademarked. If it wasn’t, he realised he’d have stumbled upon an opportunity.Ī quick lesson in trademark law: according to the US Patent and Trademark Office, a trademark “protects brand names and logos used on goods and services.”Ĭonsider the Nike swoosh, or that swirly font that reads “Coca-Cola.” These are just images, but they connote powerful associations in the minds of consumers. My article found him at a rare moment when he was thinking about intellectual property law, and Mark wondered if the S was trademarked. Mark was in New York City a few years after moving from Melbourne, Australia, and he’d just trademarked a logo for his coffee van company. Not about the history of the S, but about its future. More on that here.Īnyway, I didn’t know it at the time, but a guy in New York named Mark May read my article and had an idea. In the end, the most compelling answer came from a professor of Art History from the University of Massachusetts who thought the S might have been a “decorated initial” and had originated in medieval scripts. The answer was the S had nothing to do with Stussy, Superman or Suzuki, or any gang in California. A few years ago I wrote this article where I tried to figure that out.
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