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I have an Etsy shop selling handmade nato strap adapter for Casio digital watches. I have heard that the word Nato is copyrighted by International Watchman Inc, So that I cannot use "Nato Strap Adapter" in my listing title. I want to change it to "N.A.T.O strap adapter" or "Natu strap adapter" to avoid getting into trouble. I have checked google, it seem those two words are not being copyrighted by anyone yet. Am I able to do that?

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    NATO and N.A.T.O. aren't and can't be "copyrighted". It could conceivably be a trademark.
    – ohwilleke
    Commented Jan 12 at 17:39

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The issue is trademark nit copyright. In general a word or text string is trademarked for particular product categories. There are thousands of trademarks in various states of validity that use NATI.

Narrowing to a product class, I found at least three active trademarks for watchbands with NATO in the name.

They are - NATO (as you mentioned), NATO-G10 and NATO STRAP.

The issue with trademarks is possible consumer confusion. It looks like there is room for another NATOish watchband trademark if done by a professional.

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Ask a lawyer

This one is super-tricky because — on the one hand — the standard in question was created in 2001 by the UK Ministry of Defence. On the other hand, "NATO" — in the contect of watch straps — is indeed a trademark of International Watchman Inc.

I would ask a lawyer for advice on this one.

But if you cannot afford that, you should do everything you can to avoid being confused with the NATO brand by IWI. As long as you make it entirely clear that you are not IWI, not affiliated with IWI, not selling products by IWI, you should be okay.

Also, you can contact IWI and and tell them you wish to make strap adapters that are compatible with the MoD standard, that are known as "NATO Straps", that you have every intention of avoiding a trademark conflict... and ask them for their opinion.

Best of luck!

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Simple words usually cannot be copyrighted, but they can be trademarked. Different rules, and some details depend on the jurisdiction.

Trademarks are about the risk of confusing the consumers, so it matters if they are in the same jurisdiction and the same part of the economy. There used to be Apple Records and Apple Computers, which caused trademark disputes when Apple Computers expanded beyond computers and their operating systems. As a rule of thumb, if you are in the same sector of the economy, you meed a good trademark lawyer.

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