When an entrepreneur wants to apply for registration of a trademark with the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks (CGPDT) he is required to select a distinct brand name. The name has to be unique not only verbally but also phonetically. Extensive care is to be taken to avoid any likelihood of confusion on the part of the public with an earlier registered trademark. Therefore, before the filing of a trademark, a public search is done to check if any similar name or a name close to it exists in the record.
Public Trademark search is a facility provided on the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) official website for the convenience of public and users. All registered trademarks including those in the process are available during the public search.
The IPO’s search interface provides for the following three types of searches:
- Wordmark
It further provides three sub-types of search:
- Start With – It shows all the trademarks starting with the searched word.
- Contains – It shows the result of all the trademark containing the searched word.
- Match With – It shows the trademarks matching exactly with the searched word.
- Phonetic – As this search type suggests, it is performed to search phonetically similar words.
- Vienna Code – It is performed to find a similar artistic representation.
Phonetic Search
Phonetic Search shows trademarks having a similar sound registered in a specific Nice class in comparison to a new trademark searched for in the same class. All trademarks with different spelling but a sound too similar to confuse consumers of an average intelligence shows up in the result.
TMview & Global Brand Database
To check if similar or identical trademarks are registered one has to consult trade mark databases. Registered trademarks in India are covered by the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)’s tool called “TMview”. It allows free-of-charge trademark searches. It includes all types of trademarks present in the official databases of the participating trade mark offices, the EUIPO and WIPO. The tool is updated daily by the respective national trade mark offices and it is available in more than 35 languages. Data of more than 50 national offices are available in TMview, including data from all national EU offices.[1]
An another tool for trademark search is Global Brand Database of WIPO. These databases contain records of many national as well as international registries. Both the databases allow usual Boolean search operator. When phonetically searched for a word, they return a number of words that sound like the searched word.
TM view claims to contain 42 million records, the Global Brand Database 30 million (as of 8 August 2017). The coverage of the two databases differs considerably, however. While both contain the important international registrations, EU marks, US marks and German marks, TM view is much stronger for other European countries. The UK register is missing from the Global Brand Database, for example. On the other hand, the WIPO’s Appellation of Origins (Lisbon) register is missing from TM view. Overall, from a European perspective, TM view has a leg up.[2]
TM view wins on coverage but the Global Brand Database wins on its search capabilities because of not only its phonetic search but also more search options.
[1] European IPR Helpdesk, EUIPO, accessed on 23rd July 2020, https://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/sites/default/files/newsdocuments/Fact-Sheet-How-to-Search-for-Trade-Marks.pdf
[2] Battle of the free trade mark databases – Global Brand Database versus TMview, The IPKAT, accessed on 24th July 2020, http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2017/08/battle-of-free-trade-mark-databases.html