Trademark Search

 Trademark search

By: Robin Pandey                                                                                                         Date: 21/February/ 2022

“The process of a trademark search is the first step to protect your own intellectual property rights while avoiding a breach of somebody else’s rights. To avoid any kind of ambiguity and also receive a legal opinion as to the risks involved, one should reach out to seek professional help,”  

In this era of start-up and entrepreneur culture, there is a booming new innovative idea that is doing unorthodox work in service sector, and other industrial development fields. In order to stand out in the in the crowed you have to create your own identity, separate from others, which will differentiate your product from that of other. We often secure what we own, and if you own a start-up, you need to secure its name. The safest way is to Trademark your domain, but often it has been trademarked by someone else already and you may breach someone else’s intellectual property rights. To avoid such legal breach, you need to do a Trademark Search, prior to registration of your unique identity. It not only provides the detail of any similar and existing brand name & logo, also a list of prohibited trademarks.

In India, trademark registrations and the registered trademarks are maintained by the Controller General of Patent Designs and Trademarks and can be accessed on “Intellectual Property India” 

website. https://ipindiaonline.gov.in/tmrpublicsearch/frmmain.aspx.

Steps to do a WORD MARK Search:

STEP 1: Visit the official website of the Intellectual Property India at https://ipindiaonline.gov.in/tmrpublicsearch/frmmain.aspx.

STEP 2: In the ‘Search Type’, select ‘Wordmark’. 

STEP 3: Just on the side of Wordmark you have to select an appropriate prefix, which will show three options to choose from;

• ‘start with’ shows all the search results of the database that start with the input entered for search,

• ‘contains’ shows all the search results of the database that contains the input entered for search,

• ‘match with’ shows all the search results that exactly match the input entered for search.

STEP 4: Enter the applicable ‘class’

Fourth schedule to Trademark Rules, 2002 classifies goods and services into 37 categories; it is arranged according to the type and the description of the services and goods. An estimated total of 80,000 products are covered there from various goods and services available. Each class represents a unique type of goods and services. Identifying the class from which Trademark is related, is an important step because the registration will protect that mark only in the class that was filled in the application. If the nature of business deals with multiple goods or services then the trademark can be filed in more than one class. 

STEP 5: Click on search.

Understanding Search Results

The search result shows the total number of matching reports starting with “Searched Word” as well as the status of the application. One can access the information pertaining to the trademark application number, application date, owner information, and trademark validity date, a trademark used since the date and description by selecting the “Show Details” option against each result.