Mitigating the Risk When Selecting a New Trademark or Domain Name (Part II)

This is the fifth in a series of introductory articles on the topic of trademark law. To view the fourth in the series, please click on the Previous Page link below.

In our last article, we covered preliminary trademark searches as a relatively inexpensive first step to obtain clearance of a proposed trademark. If the new trademark passes the initial screening, trademark counsel will often recommend obtaining a more comprehensive search report from a commercial trademark search firm. The scope of the full trademark search report will depend upon the company’s proposed uses of the mark (e.g., state corporation records should be included if the proposed mark will also be used as a company name and/or trade name). In addition to a more in-depth review of the Federal Register, a comprehensive U.S. search report usually includes records from state trademark databases, thousands of common law sources, Internet content, and domain name registration records. The report provides the