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Written by : Nicholas Awtrey |
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hey everybody it's steve chief paralegal here at gerben law firm in this video we're going to look at how to run a basic federal trademark search for clothing before we get started let's take a bird's-eye view of the trademark registration process first is the search then the application which is reviewed by an examining attorney with the government this examining attorney is checking to make sure that your mark does not create a likelihood of confusion those are going to be our buzzwords likelihood of confusion in the marketplace with a previously registered trademark i point this out because it does not take an exact match of your desired trademark to justify a rejection of your application okay the first thing we need to do is come up with a name for that we're going to use a random word generator and we got queasiness first step go to the uspto.gov click trademarks click t-e-s-s click basic word mark search now i'll include links to all this stuff in the comment section below right now you can just follow along first thing we want to do is click live we're not worried about dead marks and then we can enter our search term right in this box right here no records found now as i mentioned earlier just because there's not an exact match of your trademark doesn't guarantee that it will necessarily get registered what we want to do now is expand our search broaden our search so how do we do that well let's go back and now i want to introduce you to the dollar sign the most important thing you need to know about conducting a search here the dollar sign tells the software to look for anything that comes after what you just entered so this will get queasy this will also get queasiness let's see what we get okay eight records now you'll notice some of these are registered here some of them are not if they're not registered it means one of two things either it's a recently applied for mark or an examining attorney has issued an office action which could mean one of two things itself it could either mean that there's a likelihood of confusion that this mark creates in the marketplace or there's just a problem with the paperwork okay so right now the thing that's jumping out at me in this list right off the bat is queasy beads if you watch my video on trademark classes for clothing this one right here you'll know that one of the types of classes we want to check out when we're looking for clothing is jewelry which is class 1-4 we also want to check out handbags class 1-8 so queasy beads i'm just looking at that i want to inspect this one for sure these are wristbands i would note this mark again trademark law is inherently subjective you may think that your trademark is clear while an examining attorney may think it causes a likelihood of confusion in the marketplace so what we're doing when we're conducting a trademark search is to get a broad view of the landscape see what type of trademarks are out there okay let me show you another way to refine this search it would be by using this free form button click it as you can see i already have the search laid out but let's go through it real quick this is the same thing entered earlier just now instead of the s we just have the dollar sign because i want to see maybe there's a z maybe there's a mark like that mi stands for mark index you put that in the brackets and tells the software also look for things that are live and in class zero two five this is international class zero two five again check out that video on trademark classes if you're not quite sure what that means so now we click submit and there's only one mark queach so now what we would wanna do in this scenario is just keep tearing apart the word queasiness we can put the dollar sign in the middle of the word and look at stuff like that we can then also run all these individual searches against all the different classes that i've recommended looking in so the two things i really want you to take away from this video are use the dollar sign and don't be satisfied if there's not an exact match keep broadening the classes you look in and keep tearing apart the word that you want to be trademarked finally before i go i just want to go over some limitations of this video it is just a brief overview but i hoped it helped to familiarize you with the uspto and get you started on your search process at gerben law firm we use professional grade search software which allows us to go way more in depth into these types of searches second it doesn't cover state or common law searches which is part of a comprehensive search that you want to run in order to ensure no legal trouble down the road and third it's not legal advice and is not a substitute for talking with an attorney but thank you very much for watching and because each trademark search is unique you can check out some of my other trademark search videos which should help you even more through the process
Thanks for your comment Wilbur Snorden, have a nice day.
- Nicholas Awtrey, Staff Member
when you create a new business or product or service one of the first things that you're going to do is create a name for it but you want to make sure that you don't go to all the time and effort of creating that name only to find out later that someone else has already registered that name as a trademark so what I'm going to do today is show you a really handy website that you can use where you can check to see if that name or even logo design has already been registered by someone else so let's go over to the computer and I'll show you that site ok folks so this is the website I'd like to take a look at with you today it's the World Intellectual Property Organization website and the address is WIP all dot I n T so if you go to that website address you then will have this page we then need to click on knowledge in the menu and global brand database we want to then click on access the global brand database so I want to do today is I want to show you how to do two simple searches using this database a name search and an image or local search we're going to search for a fictitious company that I'm setting up called a red squirrel and it's going to be a design company so to search for any businesses which have the name red squirrel it's really straightforward you just go to the text area and you type in red squirrel we are also going to put into the goods and services that it is a design service and we just hit search and this is the results that we get so we can see here we've got Red Bull we've got ones just called squirrel and we've got green squirrel we've got purple squirrel we've got design squirrel lots of them here but we do not have red squirrel so it would be okay on the name with that so which is great that's exactly what we want the next thing that we can do is we can actually do an image search to see if there are any logos out there with squirrels in them say we had an idea for a squirrel logo so what you want to do is you want to clear your current search which you can see here you just click on the little checkboxes and that clears the search so we do is you go to the image class section and we typed in squirrel and you'll see on this drop-down it gives us two choices we've got just squirrels or we can have a group so squirrels chipmunks animals which are similar for us we just want to do a search on squirrels today so if you click that you'll see that it changes it into a specific number in the database then you click search and it gives us results 123 pages of 30 results each page of squirrel logos so you can actually have a browse through all of these to see what squirrel logos have been registered as trademarks that will allow you to develop your own mobile concept around a squirrel idea or image and not infringe on an existing one which is in the trademark database and that's it it's really simple to use and it will just give you a little bit more peace of mind that you can use the name that you're thinking of or if it's the other way around it stops you from wasting time and resources pushing forward with a name or a logo design that at the end of the day you're not going to be able to use because someone has already registered it as their intellectual property so they are folks that's the WIPO website it's a great way to do kind of a surface level check just to see if anyone's registered a name that you're thinking about using I would always suggest though that you hire the services of a professional IP lawyer they will do a full and thorough check for you to make doubly sure that the classification that you want to register that Niemann is free if you've liked this video and find it useful I'd really appreciate it if you could share it with your friends and colleagues on social media or by email make sure to give the video a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already um when you do make sure you click on that little bail icon and you'll be notified whenever I release a new video so until I see you next time stay creative folks [Applause]
Thanks actuariauS your participation is very much appreciated
- Nicholas Awtrey
About the author
I've studied sociology of social change at Bellevue University in Bellevue and I am an expert in post-processualism. I usually feel indescribable. My previous job was funeral director I held this position for 8 years, I love talking about kung fu and ice diving. Huge fan of BTS I practice skateboarding and collect insects.
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