Registered trademark symbol ®

Use ® only after a trademark is actually registered. In the US that means federal registration by the USPTO. A pending application, a state registration or a business name filing does not qualify; until registration, use ™ (or ℠ for services).

Federal trademark law accepts three forms of registration notice: ®, the phrase “Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office” and the abbreviation “Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.” Giving proper notice can matter if you ever need to recover damages from an infringer. Putting ® on an unregistered mark, on the other hand, can be treated as misuse and weaken your position in a dispute.

Registration is country by country, so a mark registered only in the US may not be allowed to carry ® in other markets. This is general information, not legal advice.

• Place it right after the mark with no space: Acme Rocket®.
• Unlike ™, ® sits on the baseline at full height in many fonts, so brands often set it in superscript in body text.
• Use it on the first or most prominent mention, in logos and on packaging. You don’t have to repeat it every time the name appears.
• Don’t confuse it with Ⓡ, a circled Latin letter R from the enclosed alphanumerics block. It looks similar but is not the registration symbol.

• Word and Outlook: type (r) and AutoCorrect turns it into ®.
• Google Docs: Insert > Special characters, then search “registered.”
• iPhone and Android: there is no key by default; copy it from this page or create a text replacement in your keyboard settings.
• LaTeX: \textregistered.
• HTML: wrap the character in a sup element if you want it raised and smaller than the surrounding text.