Can you copy a trademark&#39;s goods and services description?
<p>Assume a trademark filed with the USPTO uses the language</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"software used to calculate PI, the square root of PI, and the cosine
  of PI"</p>
</blockquote>

<p>in its description of goods and services.</p>

<p>Can another, subsequent, unrelated, trademark applicant to the USPTO use this exact same language in its goods and services description?</p>

<p>If yes, why?</p>

<p>If not, is the grievance with:</p>

<p>a) the USPTO, because directly copying goods and services language is forbidden, and/or</p>

<p>b) the original trademark holder, because the trademark goods and services description is the intellectual property of that original trademark holder</p>

<p>Of course another applicant can use that language.  What they can't do is register the same trademark for the same goods or services.</p>

<p>If the goods or services protected by a trademark were required to be unique, there'd be no point in having trademarks.  Instead, we would have state-sanctioned monopolies.</p>

<p>To put it another way, the point of a trademark is to identify the commercial source of particular goods or services.  Suppose you sell oranges under the trademark-protected name "Jerzy's oranges," with a goods and services description reading "the sale of oranges."  Your registration does not prohibit others from selling oranges; it prohibits them from selling oranges using <em>your</em> name.  Any competitor can register a unique trademark to use in the sale of oranges, however, with an identical goods and services description of "the sale of oranges."</p>

trademark intellectual-property