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The last two companies I have worked for (both Fortune 500s) were both very concerned with intellectual property issues including protection of trademarks. And both companies had a similar requirement for trademark marking.
The style guide for the corporate division I currently work for calls for trademarks to be marked at their first use in body text, and to not be marked in titles or headings. This was specifically approved by the intellectual property group within the corporate legal department.
My last employer called for marking the first use in each chapter of a manual, even if that use was in a heading, and that standard had been a[pproved by both the IP legal group and the brand management group.
Another issue--about which there was less agreement and consistency--is what statement(s) you include on your title page or legal boilerplate page claiming ownership of the trademarks. At my current employer, only the company's name and logo are explicitly claimed as belonging to the company. At my last employer it used to be policy that the boilerplate page needed to explicitly include all the trademark and service mark names that were claimed on the corporate website and be updated with each revision of the document. Later they softened that policy to require only the trademarks that were actually used in the document to be named in the list.
-Fred Ridder
> Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 16:46:22 -0500
> From: maker -at- verizon -dot- net
> To: wade -dot- courtney -at- gmail -dot- com
> Subject: Re: Style guide recommendations for trademark placement
> CC: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
> Hi, Wade and all. I mean, do you put a trademark in the very first instance of the trademarked term, even if it's on the cover page, or in a Heading 1, or do you put it in the first instance in body text? Do you put it only once? (I inherited documents in which every instance was trademarked. While an individual legal department may require this, I doubt it's the norm).
>
> So, guidelines about where and how often to place trademarks in text.
>
> Thanks for the great Microsoft link.
>
> --Nancy
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