One of my work tasks is printing out large format objects on the 41″ printer.  Someone send me a 3′ x 4′ poster, and I printed it.  After printing the document I found several typographic errors and reprinted it again after checking with the requester.  After the 2nd copy, the requester came to me and had a revision, all the references to the competing company on the poster needed add “(R)” after the name.  So, I checked that all references had “(R)” after it and reprinted it.  I was then told I needed to print another one and received an attached email saying “Sir, you need to replace all instances of (R) with (R) to avoid legal consequences.”  That’s downright Kafka-esque and I double checked the annotated PDF which had circled the (R) with the note “replace with (R)”.  At this point we were sufficiently confused and talked to the legal person.

Me: What does this change mean?
Him: You need to replace your “registered” abbreviation with our “registered” abbreviation.
Me: What’s that mean?
Him: You used parens, R, parens, you need to use what we wrote.
Me: But you wrote, parens, R, parens.
Him: No, that means the circle thing with the R in it.  It’s a common abbreviation.

Apparently when we use (R) it means (R)  when he uses (R) it means ®. How foolish of me not to know.