Why conduct a trademark search? If this is something you are wondering about, then you are at the right place. This article will help you understand why it is necessary to conduct a trademark search.
You may think of starting a new business. Moreover, irrespective of the nature of the business (product based or service based) you would want to protect its identity. This is so that no-one else can abuse it. Trademark is one of the ways through which you can protect the identity of your business. Further, you can also ensure that your business is not abused by anyone at any point of time.
However, choosing an appropriate trademark is not possible unless and until you do a comprehensive and customized trademark search. Thus, a trademark search is a search made in the database of the Trademark Registry. The search determines whether a proposed trademark is available for use in connection with certain goods or services. In the search, similar word marks as well as phonetically similar names in a specific class is comprehensively searched.
Why Should Companies Conduct Trademark Search?
To Ensure Eligibility of Your Mark
Before giving a mark to your goods and products it is important to ensure that if the name or logo you want to trade mark is already in use. Any mark that is already in use is not eligible for being granted as trademark and thus in such a situation you will have to change the appearance and design of your trademark.
Avoiding trademark infringement lawsuit: Using someone else trademark in your own products and goods could be detrimental to you as it will bring undesirable trademark infringement lawsuit at a later date which may cost you hefty sum and hence it is important to ensure right at the beginning that you are not infringing someone else trademark.
Assessing the relative strength of your mark: Trademark strength, properly understood, refers to the scope of protection afforded a trademark by courts based on that mark’s inherent and acquired ability to influence a consumer’s purchasing decisions. A comprehensive and detailed trademark search gives searcher an opportunity to gauge the relative strength of the trademark.
How to conduct a trademark search:
TM Search if done meticulously and comprehensively could give you plenty of information about a particular brand. However, much of the success depends on the way you do a trademark search. Though every searcher has its own way of doing a search, still, there are certain steps those are common and are applied to every TM search including US Trademark Search and Canadian Trademark Search
The rules for doing trademark search are as follows:
Step No 1: Describe the products or services being sold with the mark
Step No 2: Identify specific terms for your product or service using the online Acceptable Identification of Goods & Services Manual
Step No 3: Determine international class
Step No 4: Determine related goods or services, and their classes
Step No 5: Develop a basic search strategy
Step No 6: Broaden your search strategy
Step No 7: Conduct the search
Sum-up: To sum it up we can say that doing a trademark search is important when it comes to protecting the identity of your brand. Not only will it help you create unique identification in the market but will also help you gauge the real worth of the brand.
