Cartoon stick figure pointing at a chalkboard with “John Deere” written in large chalk letters — representing a blog post about the John Deere word mark.

Trademark: John Deere

First Used: 1870

First Registered: June 1913

Current Owner: DEERE & COMPANY [1]

Trademark Type: traditional trademark; word mark

Primarily Associated With: tractors, including plows, cultivators, and mowers [2]

Generic Phrase: tractors, as in John Deere® Brand tractors

Also A Trademark For: toys [3], pocket knives [4], blankets [5], clothing [6], wagons [7], flashlights [8], and financing services [9], among many other goods and services

Brief (and likely incomplete) History: [10]

Deere & Company was founded in 1837 by the man himself, the blacksmith John Deere. Deere made his initial claim to fame by developing the first commercially successful, self-scouring steel plow. He designed a plow with a highly polished surface made out of steel from a broken sawblade. The highly polished surface would self-clean and shed the sticky soil of the Midwest prairie as the plow was used.

In the early 1900s, the company quickly expanded its John Deere® product line to include various types of agricultural equipment, including tractors, engines, and harvesting equipment. This quick expansion included several acquisitions including the 1918, $2.25 million acquisition of the Waterloo Gasoline Engine. By 1928, 50% of company sales came from tractors, engines, and harvesting equipment. In the ensuing decades, Deere & Company became a global company and the John Deere® brand is now a global sales leader in agriculture and industrial equipment.

Today, the John Deere brand has become so famous that even the iconic green and yellow color scheme is a trademark!

[1] John Deere, https://www.deere.com/en/.

[2] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 91,860, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=91860&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[3] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,402,363, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=73574305&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[4] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 3,467,182, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77335538&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[5] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 3,467,262, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77336673&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[6] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2,290,080, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=75526049&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[7] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 30,580, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=70030580&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[8] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 3,467,242, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77336397&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[9] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 4,153,164, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85397771&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.

[10] A History of Resounding Impact, John Deere, available at https://about.deere.com/en-us/explore-john-deere/history-heritage.