A trademark is a word, name, symbol, design, or combination, utilized in commerce to identify and distinguish the products of one manufacturer or seller from those of another and also to indicate the origin with the goods.
An original manufacturer or logo can be used to distinguish your product/service as dissimilar to others on the market. If you’re planning to start a business, it’s vital that you protect your brand through trademark registration.
It is important for every business owner, before obtaining a trademark registration, to conduct pre-filing diligence. Therefore, one of the most crucial tasks to perform before finalizing selecting a brand new trademark is usually to conduct a trademark search.
Steps to Conduct Trademark Search
The objective of the trademark search is usually to determine whether another customers are already while using the trademark before you submit your application and pay the fees, it is really an additional possiblity to make changes towards the trademark as needed.
The Intellectual Property Office, can certainly still approve your trademark registration, even though a similar mark already exists on their registry, however, at these times, the examiner reviewing your trademark application will notify owners of the similar trademarks of one’s application.
These owners may permit your registration to move forward by ignoring the notification, or they can submit an opposition with all the IPO. This could end up in an extended and dear process, which could probably bring about your registration being canceled. A great venue to prevent situation is to only conduct a trademark search and select an indication will not be opposed by other trademark owners.
With respect to the aim, there are a selection of methods to execute a search. You can look by trademark number or trademark owner if you’d prefer to confirm the status of a certain pending application, as an example. Nevertheless, if you’re conducting a standard trademark search before registering your mark, you must pick the link for searching by keyword, phrase, or image.
If you open the IPO website, you’ll go to a drop-down box towards the top of the page to select regardless of whether you wish to search by word, by image, or perhaps a combination of both. You can choose to look for precise matches alone and similar matches as well when searching for one word or words. The best choice would be to look for both exact and other matches, as both could cause trademark conflicts down the road.
When looking for a graphic, you will have to describe the image through different drop-down boxes on the database. Results may be refined further by indicating specific international classes, a timeframe of registration, or the status of the existing mark.
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