Trademark

Introduction
A trademark, identified by the symbols ™ (not yet registered) and ® (registered), is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization or other legal entity to identify that the products and/or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities. A trademark is a type of intellectual property, and typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. There is also a range of non-conventional trademarks comprising marks which do not fall into these standard categories.
The owner of a registered trademark may commence legal proceedings for trademark infringement to prevent unauthorized use of that trademark. However, registration is not required. The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it may be reasonably expected to expand.
Trademarks in the Czech law
As for the Czech legislation, the trademark shall be registered according to the § 2 of The Trademark act (441/2003 Sb.). The expiration of the trademark is regulated in the § 31 of the same act, whereas five reasons for the expiration are specified. Therefore we can say that trademark, as type of property, can be disposed solely by an owner and very few restrictions are set to regulate the will of the owner. One of the reason to restrict disposal of the trademark is the fact that owner has stopped to exercise his rights connected with the trademark for the period longer than five years. In that case, authorized body can abort validity of trademark.
Trademarks in the Community Law

To describe the European community law, respectively a specific area which deals with trademarks, we need to go to the Council Regulation (EC) No 40/94 of 20 December 1993 on