These words can all be used to describe commercial names, commodities, and services, and are in this sense related; but they are not synonyms, and there are important distinctions of fact to be made between them. Brand is generally understood to mean a definite, usually well-known and advertised type of commodity: the Lipton brand of tea; a popular brand of cigarettes. By extension, brand name identifies a whole group of products made or sold by the same enterprise: Westinghouse is the brand name of a line of electrical appliances.

Trademark (sometimes hyphenated as a trade-mark ) comes closet to having a definite legal status, especially when formally registered with the appropriate government agency. Legally, a trademark is a word, symbol, device or any combination thereof adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant to identify his goods and distinguish them from those manufactured and sold by others. Of the thousands in active use, most take the form of words, as Kodak , Vaseline , Technicolor , Coca-Cola , Dacron , etc. it will be noted that such words are spelt with an initial capital letter, a practice strongly recommended by their owners as a means of emphasizing exclusive rights to the good will and equity inherent in their commercial use.

Trade name , though used as a variant of trademark, is legally synonymous with the commercial name under which a firm, enterprise, corporation, association, etc. conducts its business.

• 3M Company is the trade name of a manufacturer of industrial products, many of which carry trademarks.

A logotype is any single piece of type containing several letters, a word or words. In advertising, logotype applies specifically to a particular design or style used to represent the name of a company or a trade mark so as to make it more readily identifiable and emphasizes its protected status in the public mind. Thus there are logotypes ?or logos , as they are called for short ?for may well-known trademarks .

A colophon was formerly an inscription placed at the end of a books, showing the title, the printer’s name, date and other information, such as the style and size of type used. Now the word is more commonly used to refer to a design or emblem adopted by a publisher to represent a particular line of books or the publishing house as a whole; the colophon is usually printed on the title page of books.