Mark (sign)


A mark is a written or imprinted symbol used to indicate some trait of an item, for example, its ownership or maker. Mark usually consists of letters, numbers, words, and drawings. Inscribing marks on the manufactured items was likely a precursor of communicative writing.
Historically, the marks were used for few purposes:
  • declaration of the ownership ;
  • identification of the manufacturer and place of origin ;
  • differentiation in order to distinguish between similar items. These marks are typically useful to distributors;
  • certification of the product quality.
In the 17th century in the English cloth trade a new class of marks was created, now called trademarks: the cloth was required to contain both the maker's mark and the mark of the clothier, indicating the capitalist who furnished the capital for the production.
In the US commercial law, "mark" means either a trademark, a service mark, a collective mark, or certification mark. French Intellectual Property Code defines a mark as "a sign likely to be graphical representation" of the maker.

Ownership marks

The ownership marks are the oldest ones. Some researchers claim that the decorations found on the shells of ostrich eggs in South Africa and dating back 60,000 years are marks of the owner.
Livestock branding is known for thousands of years ; other forms of signs indicating ownership are monograms and heraldic symbols. Libraries use ownership marks in the form of bookplates, rubber stamps, embossed seals.

Manufacturer's marks

The manufacturer's marks are quite old: the ones found on Korakou culture pottery are four thousand years old, and the ones on ancient Greek and Roman vases date back to 5th-4th centuries BC. While the production marks are technically distinct from the ownership marks, in the ancient times, when a craftsman typically was the same person as the merchant, and many people were illiterate, a single mark frequently served both purposes. The rise of factory marks was occurring in many industries since the 17th century, De Munck links this to changes in the labor relations and methods of production.
File:Tables d'insculpation des poinçons d'orfèvres strasbourgeois.jpg|thumb|left|Plaques with the names of silversmiths inducted into the Strasbourg guild and their registered marks
The distinction between the factory marks and trademarks in England became clear by the 17th century in the cloth trade: the manufacturer marks were required from the producers by regulations and represented a liability, while the trademark represented the goodwill, an asset, not of the actual craftsman, but of the capitalist who furnished the capital for the production.

Certification marks

Medieval guilds set up the system of compulsory marks for the craftsmen, intended to trace the defective items and punish the offenders, with most typical examples provided by the bakery trade. In English weapons manufacturing the regulations concerning the manufacturer marks were firmly established in the 14th century: no weapon shall be sold without a personal mark of the craftsman, misuse of the mark was subject to court actions.

Marks on ceramics

While occasionally the marks were directly etched onto ceramic objects, the nature of the manufacturing process was amenable to the use of seals. The oldest stamp seals were button-shaped objects with primitive ornamental forms chiseled onto them. In the fourth millennium BC, Sumerians introduced cylinder seals that had to be rolled over the soft clay to leave an imprint. From the 12th century BC the previous designs were largely abandoned in favor of amphora stamps. Romans introduced their signacula, true manufacturer's marks, around the first century BC; Byzantine maintained the tradition in their commercial stamps.