Q: I'm want to sell a certain product, but apparently it's trademarked here under no 5024494.

A: The first thing that you need to keep in mind is that a trademark serves to protect ONLY a name, logo, phrase, color, shape, etc., as it is used in conjunction with the offering of a product and/or service. Trademarks don't protect ideas or inventions or the actual products, only the marks used in offering them. There are certainly other kinds of intellectual property protection that can protect actual products (patents, most notably), but that's not the function of trademarks. So, unless the entire design/shape/layout of a particular product is trademarked (which is possible, so watch out for that), then trademark isn't the central issue regarding the decision to sell a given product. The main way to avoid trademark issues with selling a product is to make sure that the name/logo/packaging, etc, is not the same or confusingly similar to that of other sellers.

So, the mark you have listed protects the name "Scratch Map" as used with "Paper and cardboard; printed matter, namely paper; photographs; stationery; printed instructional and teaching material except apparatus in the field of geography; works of art of paper and cardboard; stickers; posters; maps." That mark would keep you from selling the same or similar products under that name. That's all that trademark does. Are there other problems with selling the product you want to sell outside of that trademark? Maybe so. Maybe the product is patented. Maybe text on it is copyrighted. Maybe there's a different trademark covering design aspects. Those are all issues that would need to be addressed beyond this one trademark, but at minimum, you can't use the name "Scratch Map" to sell any product that is the same as or similar to the ones they have listed.

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