This guide has been designed to help you use Concorde (USA) Development and Investments, Inc.'s (CDI) trademarks properly. Our trademarks are valuable assets. They symbolize the excellent reputation of CDI's services. If you encounter a difficult situation not treated clearly in this guide, please contact us.To request a copy of our logo, click here.

A trademark is a symbol used by a trademark owner to identify its services and distinguish them from those of its competitors. It can be a word, a design, or a combination of both.

An example of a word mark is the trademark CONCORDE REALTY DEVELOPMENT(TM)	CONCORDE REALTY DEVELOPMENT(TM)
An example of a word mark is the trademark CONCORDE REALTY(TM)	CONCORDE REALTY(TM)
An example of a design trademark is the CONCORDE REALTY DEVELOPMENT LOGO.
An example of a combination trademark includes both a word and a design.

We acquire trademark rights by using the marks in advertisements for our services. Our rights in our trademarks can last forever if we properly use our marks and prevent others from misusing them.

Just as we are obligated to use our own trademarks properly, we have a concurrent duty to make sure that we notify others whenever they misuse our trademarks. Failure to police improper or infringing uses of our marks could result in their loss to us as trademarks. Be aware of our trademarks. If you ever notice a mark that resembles one of ours in spelling, look, sound, or any other way, contact us or give us a call at 713-789-3600.

Some of our trademarks are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We should mark our registered trademarks with the symbol ®. Others of our trademarks are not registered. Until they are, they should be marked with the symbol TM. For example,

• Use ® with trademarks registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
• Use TM with unregistered trademarks.
• Registered trademarks must be used exactly as registered except for registered word marks, which may be used in any graphical format.
• All unregistered trademarks are word marks, which again may be used in any graphical format.

Trademarks do not have to be registered to be valid. Registration does, however, provide certain advantages in asserting our trademark rights in court.

Once a trademark has been selected and adopted for use on a product, it is important that we immediately start to advise others of our rights in that mark. Accordingly, the designation TM should be used with each adopted, but unregistered trademark.

In a brochure or advertisement, the designations ® and TM need be used only once for each mark, either in the title or caption, with the most prominent use of the mark in the text, or with the first use of the mark in the text. These designations need not be used when the mark is used elsewhere in the same text, but a word mark should be set off from the remainder of the text by special typographical treatment, such as capital or block letters.

Loss of our trademark rights can result from our own improper use of our trademarks in a manner that fails to identify them as our trademarks. The following are examples of misuse.

• Use of our word marks as nouns or in lower case can result in a word mark's becoming a common, generic term and lost to us as a trademark. Famous trademarks, such as ESCALATOR, CELLOPHANE, THERMOS, CORN FLAKES, ASPIRIN, RAISIN BRAN, and LINOLEUM have been lost in this manner. A trademark should be used as a proper adjective to modify a generic product name.
• Our trademarks could become generic if we permit others to use our trademarks other than to identify our products or services.
• Failure to use our design or combination marks precisely as registered may result in their loss.
• Use of our registered trademark on goods not specified in the registration is improper. If we want to use the registered mark on a product not covered by the registration, it may be necessary to file another registration to expand the specification of goods.