RE: Patent Pending & Trademarks

["Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

These are questions for your company's legal department
(or lawyer if you don't have a whole department). Different
companies draw the line in different places as far as how
exhaustively to mark their trademarks. The common
"loose" guideline is only at the first instance in a short
or at the first instance in each chapter for a long doc
like a manual. Other companies take a more conservative
approach and want their writers and marketeers to mark
*every* instance regardless of the impact on readability
and appearance. But it's really up to the peole who will
be responsible for litigating your trademark rights (if it
ever comes to that...) to set the policy.

Also note that the TM marking can be used on *any*
name your company claims as a trademark regardless of
whether there is any intention to ever register that
trademark (which can be a very expensive proposition).
It's not a matter of the trademark being "pending".
You get some degree of prtection and certain rights
just by claiming the name. But your legal people should
do at least a basic "prior use" search before you claim
*any* trademark name as you company's intellectual
property. Claiming a name that is already in use by some
other company in a similar industry can lead to a very
sticky situation.

My opinions only; I don't speak for Intel and I'm not a lawyer.
Fred Ridder
Intel
Parsippany, NJ