You can search for trademarks in the Trademarks Register in different ways. This allows you to identify which trademarks might be the source of an objection filed against your trademark application. This way you can decide whether to continue with your application, search for professional advice or come up with another trademark.
Simple search for exact terms
In the BOIP Trademarks Register you can do a ‘simple search’. This is done simply by entering your trademark in the search field.
With ‘simple search’ the results obtained are those in which your search query appears as an exact match, regardless of where it appears in the trademark.
- A search for ‘4’ will not only show you the trademarks ‘4’, but also any trademarks which include the number 4, such as ‘4you’.
- A search for 'cola' will give you results containing the exact word 'cola' and also words in which the sequence of letters 'cola' appears, such as 'colas', 'colavita' and 'colarebel'.
Varying your search terms yourself allows you to search very thoroughly using ‘simple search’. Searching for trademarks that are an exact match or similar to your trademark.
Advanced search
With ‘advanced search’ you turn off searching for an ‘exact search term’. The search engine searches then not only for the exact term, but also for terms that are similar to it. This significantly increases the number of results obtained.
Searching for goods and services
The owner of a trademark has an exclusive right for the products and/or services that trademark has been registered for. There are thousands of products and services, which are divided into 45 classes.
If you do not know under which class(es) your products and services fall, the complete list can be found in the Nice Class Headings
Fill in your chosen class number in the ‘Goods and services’ field. You will then see all the trademarks that have been registered for that class, as well as ongoing trademark applications and trademarks that have expired.
In the Trademarks Register you can view the relevant results one by one to determine whether an earlier trademark might be reason for someone to file an objection against your trademark application.