What is a collective mark?
A collective mark is either a trademark or service mark that is used by the members of an association, organization, cooperative or other collective group. Use of the collective mark indicates that the user is a member of the group that owns the mark. Usually the group establishes rules regulating how members may use the mark.
A collective mark is a mark used by a collective group on their individual goods and services. There are two different types of such collective marks. The first type of collective mark is a collective membership mark. This is used by merchants to indicate that they are members of some collective group. For example, the mark CPA, used by an accountant, indicates that the accountant is a member of the Society of Certified Public Accountants. Unlike trademarks or service marks, collective membership marks are not actually used to indicate the source of the goods or services – instead, they indicate that the seller is part of a defined group. However, the second type of collective marks, collective trademarks and collective service marks, do indicate source. Such collective marks are used by a group to indicate that the goods or services offered by each individual member of the group are products or services of the collective.
A collective mark is a symbol, label, word, phrase, or other mark used by members of a group or organization to identify goods, members, products, or services they render. Collective marks are often used to show membership in a union, association, or other organization — for example, ILGWU is a collective mark for the members of International Ladies Garment Workers Union. A collective mark can also be used as a trademark or service mark. For example, when the Girl Scouts sell cookies with their collective mark on the package, that indicates that goods are a product of the organization (that is, they are Girl Scout brand cookies). This way, the same collective mark can be used to indicate membership or to sell products and services.
