Trademark

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, or other indicator owned by a person or organization and used to identify their products or services. Trademarks are used to distinguish products or services from those of other people and organizations and help prevent unauthorized use of others' intellectual property (ownership of ideas). A product or service does not need to be trademarked to be put on the market, but that is at the risk of another running off with the identity and accusations of theft.

A trademark is either marked with ™ (unregistered trademark) or ® (registered trademark). The concpets of trademarks is regularly confused with that of copyrights, which is the intellectual property dealing with the right to publish, maintain, adapt and sell original work.

Information on trademarks in the USA can be found on the site of The United States Patent and Trademark Office and [Trademarkia. Dedicated Monster High fans have turned to these sites to keep track of what the future may have in store for Monster High, and often the resulting findings are the first thing discovered about a new character, doll or accessory line, product or feature. Aside from the trademark itself, information about the new 'thing' is revealed in the product/service category it is filed in. In terms of characters, the shorter the category description, the more likely the character's trademark was only filed for a mention in the [[diaries]], not to be made into an actual doll.

Initially, Monster High's trademarks were filed by Michael Moore, but Matt Solmon has taken over at some point.