By Mat Grell, U.S. Patent Attorney

By performing a trademark search your aim is to discover if any trademarks are in existence, which may be relevant to your choice of a mark or affect the outcome of your own trademark application. Based on the trademark search results you will be able to determine whether or not your mark is cleared for registration (registrable).

What you need to know:
• You need to know if your mark is under a federal registration (covering all fifty states), state registration, or is in the process of being considered to be eligible for registration.
• You also need to know whether your mark is protected by any common law rights. You should avoid using a mark that is similar in appearance and sound to a mark that is currently registered or protected by a common law right.

Since there is federal, state, and common law means of protecting marks, one has to search all thoroughly to determine whether a mark is cleared for registration.

NOTE: If you do not see your mark identifying a good or service for sale in a store, on the Internet, or elsewhere in the public domain, it does not mean that such mark is cleared for registration. Someone may have an interest in a particular mark whether regional, national or even broader. Your goal with a trademark search is to have a full understanding of the federal, state, and common law rights and any marks in the process of being registered, which may have a bearing on registerability of your mark.

Performing a search yourself will save you time and money

With proper guidance, performing a search on your own is easy and cost-effective and such savings can be applied to the preparation of a trademark application for your mark. Performing a federal trademark search is the easiest and most reliable way of discovering whether any similar registered federal trademarks or trademark applications exist. This information may be relevant to your mark or could affect the outcome of your own trademark application. Being armed with this search information serves two purposes:

• First, it helps to determine the chance of your mark obtaining registration in the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) and whether or not you should invest money in filling a trademark application or pursue registration of a different mark. If a similar mark having similar goods and services is discovered during your search you will likely want to pursue a different mark. This will save you the expense of a trademark application or worse having filed an application and the USPTO finds the same blocking mark during their search. The information in the earlier filed trademarks can help serve as a guide in drafting your trademark application, especially the goods and services description.

• Second, the trademark search information will provide you with a level of confidence as to whether or not your marketing and advertising dollars spent on business cards, letter head, marketing materials, website development, and advertising are being utilized on a trademark that has had a federal trademark pre-screening and cleared for registration.

You can start your very own patent search today by following the simple steps in my Inventor Start Kit ™