page_title: Trademark
section_title: Oldest registered trademarks
hierarchical_section_title: Trademark / History / Oldest registered trademarks
caption_attribution_description: English: Logo of Bass Brewery's Pale Ale from 1876. The oldest trademark registered with The Patent Office (UK) and arguably the oldest trademark in the world.
context_page_description: A trademark is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression which identifies products or services of a particular source from those of others, although trademarks used to identify services are usually called service marks. The trademark owner can be an individual, business organization, or any legal entity. A trademark may be located on a package, a label, a voucher, or on the product itself. For the sake of corporate identity, trademarks are often displayed on company buildings. It is legally recognized as a type of intellectual property.
  The first legislative act concerning trademarks was passed in 1266 under the reign of Henry III, requiring all bakers to use a distinctive mark for the bread they sold. The first modern trademark laws emerged in the late 19th century. In France the first comprehensive trademark system in the world was passed into law in 1857. The Trade Marks Act 1938 of the United Kingdom changed the system, permitting registration based on "intent-to-use”, creating an examination based process, and creating an application publication system.
context_section_description: The oldest registered trademark has various different claimants, enumerated below: 
  Australia: Most significant companies were already using trademarks in the mid-nineteenth century and while Australia based its patent law on the British law system, the then province of South Australia (1863), and colonies Queensland and Tasmania (1864), New South Wales (1895) Victoria (1876) and Western Australia (in 1885) had enacted laws to protect trade marks well before Britain did. Thus the Bank of New South Wales had registered its coat of arms in c.1850 and firms such as Tasmanian Jam and Preserved Fruit Co. had a trademark in 1878, when, after the Federation of Australia, the Commonwealth Trademarks Register was introduced on 2 July 1906 and the Trade Marks Office opened in Melbourne, on which date more than 750 applications were lodged. A product for treatment for coughs colds and bronchitis, PEPS, 'a wonderful breathing medicine in soluble tablet form', was the first of these federal trademarks, registered by Charles Edward Fulford; a rounded rectangle designed for the top of a tin. The shape contained the word ‘PEPs’ along with a descriptive blurb that read ‘for coughs, colds & bronchitis.’
  United Kingdom: 1876 – The Bass Brewery's label incorporating its triangle logo for ale was the first trademark to be registered under the Trade Mark Registration Act 1875.
  United States: there are at least two claims:
  A design mark with an eagle and a ribbon and the words "Economical, Brilliant" was the first registered trademark, filed by the Averill Chemical Paint Company on August 30, 1870 under the Trademark Act of 1870.  However, in the Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82 (1879), the U.S. Supreme Court held the 1870 Act to be unconstitutional.
  The oldest U.S. registered trademark still in use is trademark reg. no 11210, a depiction of the Biblical figure Samson wrestling a lion, registered in the United States on May 27, 1884 by the J.P. Tolman Company (now Samson Rope Technologies, Inc.), a rope-making company.
  Germany: 1875 – The Krupp steel company registered three seamless train wheel tires, which are put on top of each other, as its label in 1875, under the German Trade Mark Protection Law of 1874. The seamless train wheel tire did not break, unlike iron tires with seams, and was patented by Krupp in Prussia in 1853.
caption: Bass Brewery's logo became the first image to be registered as a trademark in the UK, in 1876[20]
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