When it comes to protecting a brand, securing the trademarks and logos is something that is at the topmost priority. Before proceeding for the registration of your logos and trademarks, it is always advisable to ensure right at the beginning that, whether the mark is available for use or not. It is imperative that one must make sure that their mark is not infringing on someone else’s intellectual property.
Here comes the importance of a full logo search or image search that helps the owners of the marks to determine whether or not their mark is infringing on someone else’s IP to determine to go ahead or not for the registration of such mark.
Image search in EUIPO Database:
In December 2015, EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) became the world’s first government office to make visual search available for public. The search tool of EUIPO is known as eSearch plus, wherein the user can find detailed information about the European trademarks. eSearch plus is EUIPO’s access to its database of European Union trademarks and registered community designs. With eSearch plus, the users can perform image searches and image monitoring. In this system, the users can upload an image and the system looks for similar images based on Artificial Intelligence Algorithms. The eSearch plus system of EUIPO analyses the colours, shapes and textures, rather than keywords used in classic text-based search systems. The system allows for the upload of one image when searching for trademarks and up to 7 images at once to search for designs. JPG, PNG, GIF and TIFF are the supported image formats. With eSearch plus, the user can search for, or monitor, images combined with criteria like the Vienna and Nice Classifications. This feature is particularly suitable when the trade mark image being searched has a common or abstract shape that can be difficult to describe in words, or when there are many potential words to describe it.
Image search in WIPO Database:
WIPO recently launched a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered image search technology that makes it faster and easier to establish the distinctiveness of a trademark in the target market.
WIPO released a communication on April 1st, 2019 announcing the launch of its new artificial intelligence (AI) – powered image search technology that makes it faster and easier to establish the distinctiveness of a trademark in a target market.
WIPO’s new AI- based technology, improves on this technology by using deep machine learning to identify combinations of concepts – such as an apple, an eagle, a tree, a crown, a car, a star- within an image to find similar marks that have been previously been registered. According to WIPO these Artificial Intelligence Based Image (AIBI) search tools are brand specific. The AI image similarity algorithm allows users to combine it with any other search criteria, for example restricting the results list to a given set of jurisdictions or to one or several parts of the Nice Classification – an international classification of goods and services applied for the registration of marks. Users submitting a complex or composite image can use an in-built editing tool for close cropping of a searched region of interest in the image, further simplifying the searched image for more relevant results.
The new AI- based technology results in a narrower and more precise group of potentially similar marks, facilitating greater certainty in strategic planning for brand expansion into new markets. With fewer results to scrutinize, this also translates into labor-cost savings for trademark examiners, trademark attorneys, and paralegals, industry practitioners and researchers.
WIPO’s new AI search technology leverages deep neural networks and figurative elements classification data from the Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks and from large trademark offices.
All users can access the AI search technology for free through WIPO’s Global Brand Database, where it has been fully integrated into the database search engine.
The new trademark search functionality of WIPO covers the national collections of 45 trademark offices already participating in the project – even if they have not been using a classification system for figurative elements. This represents a total number of almost 38 million trademarks to date. WIPO periodically adds new collections from around the world to the database.
