Intellectual Property & Brand Protection

Roland Corporation has long been an industry leader in the design and manufacture of electronic musical instruments, effects products, recording equipment, and other accessories. In short, Roland has set the benchmark in the music industry for the past four decades.

Since its inception, Roland has produced products that have continuously used a unique combination of design elements and features that have become distinctive to Roland, including their shape, color schemes, and fonts. In addition, Roland has dedicated significant time and resources in creating its high-quality sounds. Due to Roland’s widespread commercial success, and the prevalent use of Roland products by professional and amateur musicians, consumers of musical instruments universally recognize the appearance and sound of Roland products and instantly identify them as Roland products. As such, both the distinctive design and appearance of Roland products and their incorporation of Roland digital sounds are protected under the appropriate trade dress, trade mark, and copyright laws. In addition, as a leader in technology, Roland has also devoted great efforts to assure that its innovative products are also protected under the applicable patent laws as well.

Intellectual Property and Brand Protection

Roland actively protects our Intellectual Property (IP) and branding as key elements of our corporate compliance. Our Research and Development (R&D) staff develop proprietary technologies and create new products, and then actively obtain the IP rights to protect them. We also have great respect for others’ IP rights, and work diligently to avoid infringing those rights.

Utility and Design Patents

As part of our product development process, the Roland R&D staff work closely with our Intellectual Property department to ensure that our products’ cutting-edge technology are protected through our global approach to utility patent prosecution. This global approach to technology development is but one element which distinguishes Roland from its competition.

In addition to our utility patent filings, we also ensure that the nonfunctional ornamental elements and distinctive product appearance are also protected through the filing of design patents and enforcement of the appropriate product configuration and trade dress laws as well. For example, in the U.S. trade dress rights are protected under the U.S. Federal Trademark Law commonly known as the “Lanham Act”, while in Japan, counterfeit goods are prohibited under the “Unfair Competition Prevention Act.” Roland’s IP enforcement actions are always taken in accordance with these and other appropriate laws worldwide.

Trademarks

In order to maintain the distinctive Roland and BOSS brands, Roland has sustained a vigorous trademark registration and enforcement program since its founding. For example, we have been consistently using the widely respected Roland logo from the company’s earliest days. Roland, BOSS, and their respective logos ( , , , , ) are registered trademarks in the U.S., Japan, and many other countries throughout the world. In addition to these core marks, Roland has registered numerous additional marks which denote Roland’s high quality and reliability throughout the world.

Copyrights

Many types of copyrighted content, such as Roland’s proprietary musical tunes, sound sources, and performance data created by our engineers are installed in our products. Roland has also implemented a strong copyright protection program for its associated marketing material, technical information, images, sounds, and other features, in addition to our copyrighted product content. For example, Roland engineers work tirelessly to reproduce the best acoustic instrumental sounds and store them digitally in our products for customer use. These are all protected from unauthorized copying, distribution and sale under various copyright statutes.

Activity against Counterfeits and IP Infringements

Recently, there has been a significant increase in the infringement of Roland’s IP. This activity has been particularly severe on the internet, and is often present on websites offering counterfeit Roland branded products, products displaying confusingly similar clones of Roland products, those infringing Roland’s trademarks, and those containing unauthorized samples and downloads of Roland’s copyrighted sounds. In addition to misleading consumers, the offering of such potentially inferior products can tarnish Roland’s high quality reputation, and in some cases may lead to the equipment failure from virus infection or computer problems caused by unknown software.

In order to protect our customers, Roland is determined to take aggressive actions to stop such activities. In addition to a willingness to take direct legal action against infringers, Roland has also partnered with MarkMonitor® for our IP and Brand Protection activities. MarkMonitor is a leader in the field of global IP and Brand Protection. Specifically, MarkMonitor’s Brand Protection™ technology protects corporate brands from trademark misuse and counterfeit sales. MarkMonitor’s advanced infringement monitoring tools serve Roland globally in round-the-clock monitoring of infringing activities occurring on the internet. More than a half of the international enterprises seen in Top 100 Fortune companies choose MarkMonitor.

Roland’s IP Contact

Please contact Roland* for more information about its IP protection policies, or to notify us of any IP infringement.

*Please contact Roland distributors in your region/area.