Why should I conduct a trademark search?

A trademark search is a review of various available information related to prior registers or filed trademark, protected in a certain territory.

A preliminary search is designed to determine whether a particular trademark is (a) available for use without serious risk of infringement of the rights of a prior user, and (b) available for registration, referring to the similarity criteria under the laws of the country of trademark registration.

Even it is not compulsory to conduct a preliminary search prior to registration procedure, It is highly recommended to do it.

Searching first helps to ensure that the use of any trademark will not infringe the rights of another party, and thus reduces the risk of any challenge or lawsuit from the owner of prior rights in a trademark or trade name.

Searching will also help to determine if you can register your trademark, by considering both whether there are prior confusing applications or registrations that might block your application, and whether there is a trend, visible from previously registered trademark within the territory of interest, suggesting that certain words will not be acceptable trademarks.

By conducting searches, you will, in the long run, avoid expenditures where marks are not available, reduce the risks of being sued, and possibly be able to draft the application to avoid objections based on potential obstacles identified by the searches.

Assessing the availability for use of a mark will also help to determine the overall picture of the commercial environment surrounding a proposed mark.

For example, even though a mark may be available for use and/or registration, it may be a weak mark owing to the popularity of other, similar marks.

The more unique the mark, the stronger the mark will be and the easier (and, therefore, less expensive) the mark will be both to register and to assert and defend against other marks.

After conducting the preliminary search service, our intellectual property attorneys we will forward to you the conclusion about the existence and the chances of your trademark to be registered and will advice you in case that some changes have to be done to increase the registration chances.

Upon client's special request regarding the risks and the level of review of the search results, our intellectual property attorneys may give a formal legal opinion as to use and chances to register.

Also, separately and upon request, a client may request a comprehensive trademark search, that may regard also other prior intellectual property rights, opposable to a trademark registration:

1. Business/trade name databases;
2. Copyrights;
3. Discreet market investigations;
4. The Internet, including databases such as yahoo.com, google.com, and amazon.com;
5. Domain names.