A U.S.-registered trademark restricts U.S. people from using a trademark. However, what agreements are there that restrict U.S. people from using non-U.S. company names or images, or restrict non-U.S. people from using U.S. names or images?
1 Answer
Trademarks are purely region bound.
A US trademark restricts anyone from using a trademark in the United states of America. Many non-US companies register trademarks in the US to benefit from those market protections. Examples would be Nintendo, Sony and Mitsubishi, all companies from Japan, or Volkswagen and Porsche from Germany.
All of those by the way filed for trademarks in many jurisdictions, just to gain the protections there. Europe is special, in that they use a joint registration system, otherwise it is national.
Using trademarks without allowance is trademark infringement.
If you infringe on the rights of a trademark in an area where the mark is considered valid, you infringe on that trademark and can be sued for trademark infringement in the country where you infringe.
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And international companies do watch for infringements. I knew a salesman named Rick R**** who designed a new business card featuring two large, fancy letter Rs in one corner representing his initials. He handed his card out freely to his customers. Within a few months of printing, he received a cease and desist letter from Rolls Royce, the UK-based owner of a U.S. trademark depicting two fancy Rs. Rick ceased and desisted pronto!– MTACommented Apr 20 at 22:22
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1It’s not strictly national, the EU/EEA in particular has a single registration system. Commented Apr 21 at 0:20