TRADEMARK SEARCH CRITERIA

Introduction to Trademark

Legally speaking, a trade mark is a sign which serves to distinguish the goods and services of one organisation from those of another. Trademarks are words, logos, devices or other distinctive features which can be represented graphically. They can consist of, for example, the shape of goods, their packaging, sounds and smells.

Why register your trade mark?

A trade mark has three essential functions:

• it identifies the origin of goods and services
• it guarantees consistent quality by showing an organisation's commitment to its users and consumers
• it is a form of communication, a basis for publicity and advertising.

A trade mark can become one of the most important assets of a company.

Trademark registration is one of the strongest ways to defend a brand; a way to ensure that no one else uses it. If you do not register your trade mark, others may do so and acquire your rights to distinguish their goods and services.

Trademarks influence consumer decisions every day. A strong trade mark creates an identity, builds trust, distinguishes you from the competition, and makes communication between seller and buyer simpler. Because so much money and time is often invested in a trade mark, it is worth paying something to protect it from misuse.
What is a good or a service?

In law, a good is any kind of item which may be traded. A service is the provision of activities in accordance with human demands. A trade mark identifies the origin of goods and services of one undertaking so as to differentiate them from those of its competitors. A design covers the appearance of a product. A design cannot protect the function of a product. A patent covers the function, operation or construction of an invention. To be patentable, a function must be innovative, have an industrial application and be described in such a way as to permit reproduction of the process.

Trademark Search criteria

Enter your search criteria

Trade mark No:

Trade mark basis:

CTM CTM on which IA is based IR designating the EC All trade marks

Trade mark name:

Contains Is Begins with Ends with

Trade mark type:

- All - 3D Colour Sound Figurative Others Olfactory Hologram Word

Vienna codes:

Vienna Classification

List of results:

Detailed Simple

The most important reason for a trademark search is to make sure the mark you choose is not already registered or already being used or protected by a third party or competitor, thereby exposing you to liability for trademark infringement. A trademark search also helps identify existing registrations or use of similar trademarks, which can also result in liability or problems.

A trademark search is a collection of detailed information obtained from conducting extensive legal research and investigation of the mark you've selected. It also includes research and investigation of other marks, which are similar insound, spelling, pronunciation, appearance, meaning or commercial impression. Quality trademark searches can be hundreds of pages of detailed information.

When done correctly, a reliable trademark search will access the records of the United States Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO), The United States Library of Congress Copyright Records, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Records, both state and local government records and filings, internet and domain name registries, multiple internet websites and browsers, phone directories, business directories, product catalogs, trade journals, magazines, newspapers, periodicals, news letters, and numerous other publications and databases.

The content and accuracy of a trademark search is critical to an attorney's accurate analysis and evaluation of whether you can legally use or register a mark. For this reason, we only rely on trademark searches prepared by the industry's leading trademark search specialists.

Attorney Review and Analysis: Experienced trademark attorneys review the trademark search results because a trademark search is just paper if you don't have the legal knowledge and experience to read and interpret all the detailed information contained in the search. Incorrect reading or interpretation of a trademark search can lead to dangerous results. A trademark search should only be read and interpreted by a trademark professional qualified to provide you with recommendations for properly registering and protecting your mark.

Accurate Reporting: As attorneys, the job is to provide you with accurate information, whether it is good news or bad news. Legal analysis of a trademark search may disclose that mark is not available for use or registration. Legal analysis can reveal obvious or hidden dangers, which can subject a business to unreasonable risk or liability.

Although negative trademark findings may create initial disappointment, it is better to receive accurate information about potential risks and dangers so you can avoid or eliminate them. If the mark you choose is not available for use or registration, our attorneys can recommend strategies, changes or modifications to help avoid conflicts and potential hazards. In many instances, the changes or modifications result in solutions, which clients prefer over their original choice of marks.

Cost Efficiency: Certain trademarks may be difficult to register, or the cost of registration may be more than a client considers worthwhile. Depending on the circumstances, some marks are worth investing more time and expense in than others. Sometimes it may even be more cost efficient or advantageous to select a new trademark altogether. Often the best ideas are born of necessity, and sometimes the new trademark selected is altogether better than the original. These important business decisions require complete and accurate information, as well as clearly defined options. The knowledge and experience of a trademark attorney are a big advantage at this stage of the trademark process. No business needs surprises, and therefore we provide realistic estimates of anticipated costs and expenses for registering and protecting your trademarks.

International Trademark Search

The Community trade mark (CTM), administered by OHIM, was introduced in 1996 to cover the whole of the European Union and is valid in all 27 Member States. To date, OHIM has registered around 500 000 trademarks on behalf of hundreds of thousands of companies from all over the world, and this total is increasing rapidly every year. The time taken to register a CTM has fallen significantly over recent years. On average, where national searches are not requested, it now takes 26 weeks to registration for applications with no deficiencies

An International trademark search is a vital part of the process. By this trademark search, we can reveal whether your proposed mark is capable of registration. If you do not carry out a search, you are applying for a trademark 'blind' and considerably increase the risks of losing the filing fees. The international trademark search allows us to identify the likelihood of your proposed mark being registered based on the earlier opposition from examiners and recent case law
In order to carry out international trademark search, we will require from you a brief description of the good or services, together with your use within your industry. This will help us when we decide the appropriate area to seek protection under.

Trademark search provides detailed information on trademark name search, which is required to make your trademark name is legally available and it is best to do this before expansion, opening, incorporation or designing your logo.

Online trademark search

Online trademark search is important because you need to determine whether another business is already using trademark that is identical or similar to the business or product name you want to use. Online trademark search and free trademark search can help you in finding all information related to trademark. Federal trademark search can also assist you in filing the federal trademark application.

Trademark Search in India

Before filing an application for a trademark, it is highly advisable to conduct a trademark search. A basic trademark search includes registered trademarks and applications for trademarks in INDIA. TM INDIA providing a free trademark Search. You are requested to fill up the following Form for requesting a free trademark. The search results shall be sent to you within two working days. Please note that this free search will give you a preliminary idea of the existence of any conflicting marks This search is for information only and although every possible effort has been made to ensure accurate results, TM INDIA cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Before filing your trademark in India it is important that you evaluate possible obstacles that may arise during registration process.

India Trademark Services

Comprehensive India Trademark Search facility where we conduct a search in the India Trademark Registry covering India Trademark Database that includes all Trademarks issued and Pending Trademark Applications whether they are published in the official journal or unpublished. This comprehensive India Trademark Search is conducted in the database of trademarks and service marks that are registered and advertised before acceptance in the Trade mark Journal published by the Trade Mark Registry. India Trademark Watch service enables you to utilize watch for any mark conflicting with your trademarks advertised in the India Trademark Journal of India and notify you in time so you can file Trademark Opposition to such marks. he Registered Trademarks under the Trademark Registration rules become a part of the Trademark register. The register can be viewed for verification while issuing the trademarks. Any Patent Infringement or copyright infringement done will subject the infringer to suitable action by the inventor or owner of the copyrights . Similarly Trademarks can also be protected under its respective domain.

Trademark Protection

Trademark protection is given to names, logos, and other marketing devices that are distinctive. These distinctive trademarks are sometimes referred to as "strong" trademarks also known as "inherently distinctive" marks. Trademarks may also become strong because they become well known to the public through their use over time or because of a marketing blitz. Trademarks that merely describe some feature or quality of the goods or that are based on someone's name or a geographic term are usually considered to be weak and thus unpredictable under trademark law.

India brand marketing creates an effective, integrated strategy to build a value added brand in today’s competitive marketing in India which mainly involves advertising, marketing, publicity and research.

A trademark application is a way to protect an institution's trademarks. An institution may lose a trademark if it stops using it, if the proper renewal forms are not filed when required, or if the trademark name evolves into a generic name for the product type, or if proper quality control is not exercised over licenses. An institution can also lose a trademark if it participates in "naked licensing". This occurs when the trademark owner does not monitor the quality of licensed products. To prevent this from happening, institutions must have quality review procedures in place.

India Trademark studio is kind of a website work which is used for small and big business in India which provides both the positive and negative experience on the website. Trademark Company is a trademark protection centre which provides the industries the most comprehensive suite for trademark protection services. They are specialized in trademark and brand protection industries. India Trademark strategy explains the simple and easy rules to choose and use the trademarks in India. The strategy gives a detailed explanation about the trademark logo, trademark protection, choosing a trademark and as to how to use the trademark. The Trademark association was formed in 1878 by seventeen merchants. There are about 4,900 members present in this association.

Proper Steps should be taken for Trademark Protection, copyright protection, patent protection and logo protection accordingly once they have been granted so that infringement can be avoided. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has layed several rules for issuing the Patents and Trademarks. The Registered Trademarks under the Trademark Registration rules become a part of the Trademark register.

Conclusions

In traditional trademark retrieval systems, the trademarks are first annotated with keywords that are then used for retrieval. The Vienna Classification is a well-known scheme to achieve this purpose and it constitutes a hierarchical system that proceeds from the general to the particular, dividing all figurative elements into categories, divisions and sections. The Present TRADEMARK system used the graphical features that consist of the spatial distribution, spatial frequency, local correlation and local contrast

References

[1] International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks – Vienna Agreement. International Property Organization, Third edition, 1973.

[2] Wu J. K., Mehtre B. M., Gao Y. J., Lam C. P. and Narasimhalu A. D. “STAR – a Multimedia Database System for Trademark Registration.” In First Intl. Conf. on Applications of Databases (ADB-94), pp. 109-122, Sweden, June 1994.

[3] Kato T., Kurita T., Shimogaki H., Mizutori T. and Fujimura K. “Cognitive View Mechanism for Multimedia Database System”. In Proc. of Intl. Workshop on Interoperability in Multidatabase Systems IMS’91, pp. 179-186. April 1991.

[4] Eakins J. P., Shields K. and Boardman J. “ARTISAN – a shape retrieval system based on boundary family indexing”. In Proc. SPIE: Storage and Retrieval for Still Image and Video Databases, Vol. 2670, pp. 17-28, 1996.

[5] Kim Y.-S. and Kim W.-Y. “Content-Based Trademark Retrieval System System Using Visually Salient Feature”. In Proc. of the Intl. Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 307-312, 1997.

[6] Manmantha R., Ravela S., and Chitti Y. “On computing local and global similarity of images. In Proc. of the SPIE – Human and electronic imaging, pp. 24-30, 1998.

[7] Hu M. “Visual Pattern Recognition by Moment Invariants”. IRE Trans. on Information Theory, vol. IT-8, 1962.

[8] Ciocca G. and Schettini R. “Similarity Retrieval of Trademark Images”. In Proc. of the Intl. Conf. on Image Analysis and Processing, pp. 915-920, 1999.

[9] Jain A. K. and Vailaya A. “Shape-Based Retrieval: A Case Study with Trademark Image Databases.” Pattern Recognition, 31(9):1369-1390, 1998.

[10] Kwan P. W. H., Kameyama K. and Toraichi K. “Trademark Retrieval by Relaxation Matching on Fluency Function Approximated Image Contours.” In Proc. IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications, Computers and Signal Processing, pp. 255-258, Canada, 2001.

[11] Alwis T.P.G.L.S. “Content-Based Retrieval of Trademark Images”. Ph.D. Thesis, University of York, February 2000.

[12] Leung, W. H. and Chen T. “Trademark Retrieval using Contour-Skeleton Contour Classification.” In IEEE Intl. Conf. on Multimedia and Expo. (ICME 2002), Lausanne, Switzerland, August 2002.

[13] Leung, W. H. and Chen T. “Retrieval of Sketches Based on Spatial Relation Between Strokes.” In IEEE Intl. Conf. on Image Processing (ICIP 2002), New York, September 2002.

[14] van Rijsbergen C. J. Information Retrieval, Butterworths, London, 1979.