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According to the guideline of the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) concerning the trademark indication, "If you claim rights to use a mark, you may use the "TM" (trademark) or "SM" (service mark) designation to alert the public to your claim of ownership of the mark, regardless of whether you have filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). However, you may only use the federal registration symbol "®" after the USPTO actually registers a mark, and not while an application is pending". The concepts as indicated in the guideline of the USPTO are almost the same as the practice in Taiwan.
Accordingly, the indication or marking "TM" may be used in any status of a trademark, no matter whether the trademark may never be filed or registered, or whether such a mark may be in the process of application or has been granted registration. However, if the symbol is '®', then, it denotes a trademark that is registered with the concerned authorities in Taiwan.
The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) determined in a case that a business's use of the symbol "®" at the lower right-hand corner of a trademark, during the period when an application for registration of the trademark was pending or when application for registration had been reviewed but the registration had not yet been irrevocably acquired, was a false and misleading representation concerning the trademark, and thus violated Article 21 Paragraph 1 of the Fair Trade Act.
A rather controversial issue in current practice is that whether consumers in Taiwan are likely to be misled into believing that a trademark registered in another territory is also registered in Taiwan, if the symbol "®" is used on foreign goods bearing the trademark when these are sold in Taiwan as well as in the territory where the trademark is registered. This remains to be clarified in future cases.
" (phonogram), or the wording "Copyright", along with the year of first publication and the name of the owner of copyright. With regard to patent rights, patented products or their packaging are marked with a patent number, or the word "Patent" followed by the number.