Some early trademarks registered in Tasmania

Trademarks were registered with Thomas T. Watt at the Customs House, Hobart, in 1878. This one was for Orlean Plum Jam (below):

By the 1880s, trademarks were registered at the Registrar’s Office, Davey St. Hobart.

Walch’s Tasmanian Almanac 1889, p. 222.
All photos © The Nevin Family Collection 2008

Applications for copyright were regulated by the Registration of Trade Marks Act 28, No. 6, Victoria, from 1864. As this notice indicates, only two copies of the applicant’s trade mark, applied to the “goods” they were intended to protect, were required to be deposited with the Registrar. The applicant was issued with a one year Provisional Certificate, and if no objection was raised, the copyright endured absolute for a period of 14 years. Many of the applicants were American, British and European companies with established brands of tobacco, farm implements, and liquor; several were Melbourne and Sydney companies, and a smaller number were Tasmanian businesses seeking patents for jams, medicinal and toilet preparations, and woollen fabrics manufacture.

These early examples of trademarks registered in Tasmania in the 1870s are held at The National Archives Office of Australia, Canberra:

Series A1098 Register of Tasmanian Trade Marks 1869-1906
Series A1099 Classification Index to Tasmanian Trade Marks 1869-1906
Series A1101 Alphabetical Index to Proprietors of Tasmanian Trade Marks 1869-1906
Series A1566 Applications for Tasmanian Trade Marks 1869-1906

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