Having trademark for your brand makes it appear uniquely in the market among hundreds of brands. That’s why corporates spend hefty amount of time, money and efforts to develop a trademark and get registration for it. But, don’t ignore few important steps before trademark registration. One of those is, understanding, how to do a trademark search. It is because your trademark might not be legally available. So once registered, you will end up fighting legal battles.
Thus, with this, you choose the correct mark which is available. This article will tell you everything about how to do a trademark search, its advantages, etc.
Also read: Trademark Application Form: Understanding Prosecution Search For It
What are the objectives of a Trademark Search?
Trademark availability is the key factor to select a legally correct trademark. If your trademark is not available you will receive office action from trademark office. Further, even if you get it registered, you will be sued by the original owner of that trademark. Thus, to avoid the legal battle to come its necessary to have a correct trademark. The trademark search is for this purpose only.
Industry experts all over the world, recommend going for a trademark search. It helps you discover the global availability of the trademark you are choosing for your brand. So there are primarily the two main objectives of conducting a trademark search:
- Checking infringement search:
Before filing application for your trademark, you need to search current and pending applications at trademark office. It avoids you from infringing someone else’s rights. So the main idea is to ensure that probability of infringing someone’s trademark is very less. This way you won’t be getting any potential infringement lawsuit in future.
2. Checking registration search:
Here you find the deceptively similar trademarks already existing in the market. It helps you develop a unique trademark which can distinctively describe your brand. You need to identify following things if present in your trademark:
- Geographical name
- Surname
- Illegal/inappropriate meaning or connotations
- Deceptive or confusing elements
- Known meaning related to quality, kind, quantity, value or intended purpose of the goods or services.
Also read: Filing trademark application: Confusions to Avoid
How to search and develop a free trademark name?
To rule out any similar mark already in use by someone else, search engine tools help you. However, they have many limitations also, like already registered trademarks yet to be launched cannot be identified. That’s why full-fledged trademark search is done to rule out this elimination. There are multiple categories of it, read below:
- Identical Trademark Search:
This type of search, finds you the trademarks that are phonetically sounding similar or have similar visual match.
- Similar Trademark Search:
It helps you identify identical or confusingly similar trademark names or symbols.
- Trademark Index Search:
Here you get the identifications of companies that have similar or identical names as per your trademark.
- In-use Verification Search:
This type of search checks on the third party having prior rights of a trademark. Here you ensure whether they are using the trademark correctly or not. It may provide you the grounds for challenging their trademark registration.
- Trade name search:
This type of search identifies trademark name rights that may conflict with desired trademark. It does so by segregating companies with similar or identical names with the search terms. Apart from this, a trademark attorney can also check a chosen mark for unintended meanings and associations. This search is of particular significance should a company launch its product or brand in foreign countries where linguistic differences could charge you out.
Also read: Trademark Application Process: Important Aspects
How and where to get best trademark search service?
Trademarks have the power to make or break your brand. Thus it is necessary to build a trademark that cannot be challenged, cannot be illegally used. Further you cannot achieve this without a right partner with you. They will give you accurate reports and help you at every stage to develop a correct trademark. That’s why you need to choose us, “Patent Paralegal Force”.
We work with fully professional team of trademark and patent experts who work with state of the art tools. We provide you reliable services that you can use to take correct business decisions. With our best in class services, we have got clients in over 45+ countries all across the world. Read more about us here.