ABSTRACT
In late August 1918, the British trade journal Advertiser’s Weekly predicted that the future of world commerce belonged to the branded commodity that was protected by a registered trademark. Although the previously quoted article used the terms brand and trademark as virtually synonymous, modern trademark law argues that trademarks are essentially pieces of intellectual property and, as such, are part of the legal realm, whereas brands are trademarks that have been loaded with social and cultural meaning (Phillips 2003; George 2006). Trademarks are a type of intellectual property. They consist of names, words, phrases, designs, images, or a combination of these to exclusively identify the commercial source of a product or service. A brand, in turn, is a trademark that has been ‘released’ to compete in the socio-cultural sphere of the market. Whereas a trademark is a purely legal entity operating in a commercial context, the brand is a ‘cross-over’ concept:
It is an image or a message which is embodied in icons which are protected by trade marks, while being embedded in cultural as well as commercial contexts. Checks on the abuse of trade mark monopolies will not be brought to bear on abuses of the power exerted by the owner of a brand image (Phillips 2003: 658).
