Newsletter Stories


Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Forest Stewardship Council Trademark Registration

April 30, 2014


The Forest Stewardship Council owns, among others, three primary trademarks: the initials ‘FSC,’ the phrase the ‘Forest Stewardship Council,’ and the “FSC checkmark-and-tree logo”.

These trademarks are used allover the world by thousands of different stakeholders and are officially registered in over 60 of the countries in which we operate. In the United States, ‘FSC’ and the checkmark-and-tree logo have been officially registered for quite some time.

After twelve years of collecting evidence and working diligently on our application, the United States Patent Office officially registered “Forest Stewardship Council” as a trademark on December 31, 2013.

What does this mean for you? With the addition of Forest Stewardship Council, all three FSC trademarks are now officially registered in the United States Patent. This means, when using any of these three trademarks you should use the superscript ® for the first or most prominent use.

For on-product labeling guidance, Annex 1 in the Trademark Standard that lists trademark registrations by country and by mark has been updated and can be found here.

To learn more about trademark use, please visit the trademark section of our website here.