A fictional logo using the SM symbol.

In some countries, notably the United States, a trademark used to identify a service rather than a product is called a service mark or servicemark. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual A service is the non-material equivalent of a good. A service provision is an economic activity that does not result in Ownership, and this is what differentiates In Marketing, a product is anything that can be offered to a Market that might satisfy a want or need When a service mark is federally registered, the standard registration symbol ® or "Reg U. A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual S. Pat & TM Off" may be used. Before it is registered, it is common practice (but has no legal standing) to use the term (SM).

A service mark differs from a trademark in that the mark is used on the advertising of the service rather than on the packaging or delivery of the service, since there is generally no "package" to place the mark on, which is the practice for trademarks. Transportation carriers would paint their service marks on their vehicles, such as on planes or buses. Personal service providers would put their service marks on their delivery vehicles, such as on the trucks of plumbers or on moving vans. A plumber is a Tradesperson who specializes in installing and maintaining systems used for potable (drinking Water, sewage Drainage, or industrial A moving company, removalist, or van line is a company that helps people and businesses relocate their goods from one place to another However, if the service deals with communications, it is possible to use a service mark consisting of a sound (a sound mark) in the process of delivering the service. A sound trademark is a non-conventional Trademark where Sound is used to perform the trademark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of This has been done in the case of AT&T, which uses a tone sound followed by a woman speaking the company's name to identify its long distance service, and MGM has used the sound of a lion's roar for its motion pictures. Before proposing a merge request please see Talk and see if the merger you propose has recently been made and The lion ( Panthera leo) is a member of the family Felidae and one of four Big cats in the Genus Panthera.

Under U. S. law, service marks have a different standard of use in order to count as a use in commerce, which is necessary to complete registration and to stop infringement by competitors. A trademark normally needs to be used on or directly in association with the sale of goods, such as on a store display. As services are not defined by a concrete product, use of a service mark in advertisements is instead accepted as a use in commerce. Advertising is a form of Communication that typically attempts to persuade potential Customers to Purchase or to consume more of a particular Brand

The service mark symbol (℠) is found in Unicode at U+2120. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's The HTML entity for this symbol is thus ℠ or ℠. In SGML and its derived Markup languages HTML and XML, an entity is a named body of data associated with a document or the unnamed document

See also

• Certification mark
• Marketing
• Trademark