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 concept 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. Keeping track of these websites provides insight as to what the future may have in store for Monster High, and often these findings are the first publically available information about a new character, product, or feature. Aside from the trademark itself, information about the new 'thing' is revealed in the product/service category it is filed in.
 * The term "toy figure" tends to indicate a pet.
 * The term "doll playset" tends to indicate a playset for the dolls, which is anything from furniture to landscapes and vehicles for the dolls to interact with and in.
 * The terms "dolls, doll clothing and doll accessories" turns up the most and roughly can mean three things. For one, it can indicate an accessory or doll line. Two, it can indicate a character and doll. And three, it can indicate a character and mention in one of the doll logs, usually the diaries.

Most of the early Monster High trademarks were filed by Michael Moore. Those which weren't are the July 11, 2008 trademarks, the December 12, 2008 trademarks, the September 8, 2008 trademarks, and the November 18, 2009 trademarks, which were filed by Irene K. Chong. Matt Solmon took over trademark filing duties with the September 2010 trademarks.

In addition to the Monster High ones, Matt Solmon also handles the Ever After High. Note that this means that it is not always clear when a trademark is filed if it is for Monster High, Ever After High, or maybe even neither, because the only distinguishable elements are any pun or keyword present in a trademark and any keyword present in a category. The "future trademarks" section is a list of trademarks interpreted to be more likely related to Monster High than to something else and for the same reasons lacks trademarks interpreted to be more likely for something other than Monster High.

Unused trademarks

 * Jean Claw, aside from the sound, has been suggested to be a Monster High-related trademark due to a conversation on MonsterHighDolls in 2012 in which a member of the Monster High team was asked if the name was a play on Jean Claude, which was denied rather than the trademark marked as not-Monster High-related. Jean Claw was trademarked at the same time as Ghouls Rule and a few months before anything related to Scaris: City of Frights.
 * Cosmic High, High Seas High, Luna High, and Robo High likely all were meant to be high school franchises like Ever After High.