Ask HN: Will I really lose my trademark if I don't use it as an adjective?
I am not a lawyer, take this advice with a large grain of salt.<p>From what I understand: Your lawyer is technically correct, but possibly being overly conservative&#x2F;risk-averse about it, which is the job of a good lawyer. If you trust your working relationship with your lawyer, trust your lawyers advice on this and find a way to meet your lawyer somewhere in the middle.<p>First of all, ordinary trademarks are no longer registered (the TM symbol is kind of unregulated at this point and only really as effective as you can prove in a court case that you&#x27;ve used it longer and it isn&#x27;t just a generic word; you arguably don&#x27;t even need to use the TM symbol itself these days). I&#x27;d say that I see a lot more TM than (R) trademarks most days, but on writing that am actually not all that certain.<p>If you are registering a trademark, you are registering the (R) symbol variant remains stricter about what may be registered and how. (In exchange for being harder to register and stricter in its registration you get stronger protections in court.)<p>If you look at examples of continued (R) usage you will find a few of the particularly older, more conservative brands do go to great pains to avoid even being used as a adjectives (they don&#x27;t want to be used as real words at all) and are often &quot;X(R) brand product&quot; like &quot;Kleenex(R)Brand Tissues&quot;. (Kleenex is one that is particularly conservative on this front as a lot of people do use Kleenex as a generic noun and they have been in danger of losing their trademark over the years because of that. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleenex.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleenex.com</a> is littered with &quot;Brand Product&quot; speak.)<p>You could probably get away with not registering your trademark at all, as most startups seem to do. If you do want to register, you should probably follow your lawyer&#x27;s advice, even if it does feel particularly out of date or overly conservative&#x2F;risk-averse.<p>Hope that helps.