All About Our Trademark Search Services
A trademark search is a crucial step before applying for trademark registration with the USPTO. We highly recommend a comprehensive trademark conflict search to assess the risk of your mark conflicting with another, which could lead to costly fines, penalties, and legal actions. This search helps you avoid potential roadblocks early in your business lifecycle. Our comprehensive search examines marks in the federal registry, state registries, social media, and other online presences. In contrast, a basic "knock-out" search only looks for exact or very similar matches in the USPTO trademark registry, missing potential conflicts in other areas.
What's Included in a Trademark Search?
This is critical and we highly recommend having a comprehensive trademark search performed before filing.
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Your comprehensive search results are analyzed by a licensed attorney, before we recommend moving forward with a trademark filing.
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The comprehensive search includes: search of the federal trademark registry for similar marks in the same and similar classes of goods/services, websites, social media, state registries, various databases, and common law trademarks.
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The search is a predictive tool. Your search result will include a detailed opinion letter as to how likely your trademark application will be met with an office action by the USPTO examining attorney. We do this by assigning a risk factor to your potential application. A "high risk" application is one that we feel has significant impediments and thus will likely be met by at least one substantive office action that will be difficult to overcome. A "low risk" application is one where we believe that no significant impediments exist and that the application should have little issue being approved. Most applications are rated as "medium risk." These are those applications where we believe impediments may exist, but that they more likely than not can be overcome by a solid response to the substantive office action.
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While the search is a valuable predictive tool, it can never be a guarantee of success as the final say as to what impediments exist and whether they can be overcome during the registration review lie exclusively in the hands of the USPTO Examining Attorneys. In addition, a third party may raise an objection against your mark at any time during or after the registration process. That said, opting for our comprehensive search will help you understand potential conflicts and challenges in your application, increasing your chances of success and possibly saving you costly expenses incurred in starting a brand using an infringing mark or defending your mark against a cease and desist or infringement action.