Trademark Searching

Running a trademark check against your shortlist of names for your new company, products, or services is important because it will mitigate the risk of launching into a market where your chosen name is already in use. If another party has registered your chosen name as a trademark in that market, they could take action against you for infringement or oppose your trademark application. Even if they do not have a trademark registration in that market, they could act against you based on their prior use of the mark (common law rights). Your target customers may also be confused by your offering if you use a brand name that is already in use. 

Trademarks are territorial rights, so it's important to run a trademark check in the jurisdiction(s) of interest to you. This should include the markets in which you plan to retail your goods or services, as well as the ones in which you manufacture, transport, and market your goods. Each jurisdiction maintains a register of granted trademark rights so you can search directly at the trademark office in each place, use a cross-jurisdictional search tool, such as our Markify Clearance & Watch Platform, or instruct a specialist provider such as Questel to run a trademark search on your behalf. The benefit of working with a provider is that you can outsource the entire responsibility and process of trademark searching to an expert, thereby minimizing time and risk. As crucially, our software and service also run searches against common law sources (such as domain names, business names, and web content) to provide a more comprehensive trademark check.