On the Web there are easy ways to search patents, but trademarks are still lost in government websites that are not particularly search-friendly. One of the DemoPit companies that launched at TechCrunch50 is addressing this problem with a website that makes trademark search a breeze.
Trademarkia let’s you search all U.S. trademarks filed since 1870, including dead marks. The company has scans of all the marks and returns results in a very appealing visual grid. You can search by company, theme, product category, or even filing attorney. Companies can also file a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office through the site.
Trademarkia is a great resource for anyone researching trademarks, companies getting ready to file a trademark, or even product and brand logo designers. It operates much like a domain registrar like GoDaddy. Instead of searching for available domain URLs, you search for trademarks, and if they are available, you can register them for a fee.
Let’s say you want to use a Pegasus for your company’s new logo. On Trademarkia, you can search all trademarks with a pegasus to make sure you are not duplicating someone else’s mark. You can search for dead marks, and if you like one, you can register it for $159.
You can also can look at all 408 trademarks registered to Apple, or sort them to see just the 85 marks Apple has allowed to expire. Some of Apple’s toss-aways include “Mactel,” “iMusic,” “Vingle,” “Xray,” and something called the “Graphulator.” At one point Apple also trademarked “Cougar” and “Lynx” for its Mac OS series, but it let them die. Those are currently available.
Very cool and useful. DempPit had loads of cool companies, many cooler than the TC50 themselves.
Muutu, fundrazr, StuffBuff , meaningtool, are a few that come to mind. This one I missed but something that I think is very in demand.
Try to search any trademark which created this year. I think it is not showing up
You are correct, we haven’t indexed the 2009 data yet. We will be doing so in next two weeks. After that time, we’ll be updating the site daily with the latest USPTO data. Trademarkia will soon be just as accurate as the USPTO, with much more deeper/interesting search capabilities. Stay tuned.
Raj Abhyanker CEO of Trademarkia
I’m delighted to see that “Macintosh” is available for sale as a trademark describing computers, and I plan to buy it for Psystar. Err – have I understood this right?
Set your search criteria to all categories – it definitely shows up a few times.
Very cool service indeed though.
You’d never get it. You’d spend your money ($350 + attorney fees) for the “macintosh” name, and then when they publish your application (if it even gets that far), Apple and many others would jump ALL OVER that name as being used in the art.
Hello,
Trademarkia is in fact right about the trademark on “Macintosh”. There are many trademarks for the name “Macintosh” some which are live, and others which are abandoned. You can see a list of all the Macintosh trademarks on Trademarkia here:
http://www.trademarkia.com/trademarks-search.aspx?tn=macintosh
Apple’s original Trademark filing of 1984 on the name “Macintosh” was in fact canceled in April 2008, possibly for a failure to pay renewal fees, voluntarily, failure to show continued use, or for some other reason:
http://www.trademarkia.com/trademark-details.aspx?tid=73480457
Apple refiled a trademark on the word “Macintosh” however on July 28, 2008, but that mark is still pending. See :
http://www.trademarkia.com/trademark-details.aspx?tid=77532612
Trademarkia is full of interesting historical information such as this throughout the site.
When a user registers for an abandoned or canceled mark through Trademarkia, the service performs a check of other pending marks with the same name which are still alive.
If the mark is famous, such as the word ‘Macintosh’, it is highly likely that Apple will object to new filings. Famous names enjoy additional trademark rights in the United States (dilution test rather than likelihood of confusion). Trademarkia guides users through this process of registering new names. However, there are often millions of interesting and valuable expired names which may be available for repurchase!
I’ve posted more thoughts to common questions on Trademarkia on the Y Combinator hacker blog :
http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rabhyanker
Kind regards,
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia and IP Attorney
raj@trademarkia.com
The original 1984 Macintosh U.S. trademark expired in April 2008. Maybe forgot to payrenewal fees/statement of use fees? Seems like the refiled the name in July 2008.
This looks like a good site to do trademark research, and if you cannot find a trademark attorney and do not want to do the filing on your own, this site offers to do the filings for you.
However, the $159 cost is deceiving. Being a patent / trademark attorney myself, I tried the site thinking that they had some way of doing the filing fee for $159. This is not the case. This is their fee IN ADDITION to the $350 that you would have to pay for the trademark. This information should be disclosed up front.
The information is disclosed up front, here it is :
http://www.trademarkia.com/trademark/trademark-services.aspx
Trademarkia offers both state trademark registrations as well as federal trademark registrations. For many states, state trademark registration fees are as low as $10. What other pages do you think it should be disclosed on? We’ll update the site accordingly.
Raj Abhyanker
CEO
Trademarkia.com
“However, the $159 cost is deceiving. Being a patent / trademark attorney myself, I tried the site thinking that they had some way of doing the filing fee for $159.”
And you didn’t know this?
There is also additional cost for TEAS office action. I always do business directly with TEAS and the attorney responsible for the office action.
They give you their direct number and you can contact them directly.
Robert, just saw a place on the home page we can make the government fees clearer on Trademarkia. We’ll add + fees on the home page luggage tag. Thanks for the tip.
Kind regards,
Raj Abhyanker
CEO
Trademarkia.com
Yes, I agree with you that the $350 should be disclosed up front. This hidden cost is deceiving to the genuine investors.
Thanks Charmaine,
We will add this to the home page ASAP. thank you for the feedback! See my comment above.
Kind regards,
Raj
CEO of Trademarkia
We are adding $159+fees to the luggage tag on the Trademarkia home page now to make this even clearer. Note: through Trademarkia, you can file both US and State trademark filings. Fees for some states like Arizona are just $10, not $350. Raj
I agree as well, all of the fees need to be obviously disclosed on the home page! Regardless, I’m still not sure why this is easier than using the; USPTO site at
http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm;
click search in the column on the right and you’re off and running. No additional fees and the most comprehensive search results available. They also have a ridiculously easy filing process found here:
http://www.uspto.gov/teas/eTEASpageA.htm
I’m not a lawyer, nor a legal professional, just a frugal entrepreneur that took a little time to research the USPTO to avoid paying unnecessary fees for redundant services.
Steve,
Trademarkia will perform a final check to make sure your description and classification conforms to USPTO requirements. The USPTO will not.
Trademarkia.com will automatically screen generic and merely descriptive marks that have a low chance of getting granted. The USPTO site will not.
Trademarkia will automatically generate a conflicting marks report of confusingly similar marks which might get in the way of your registration. The USPTO site will not.
Many marks go abandoned because they receive Office Actions for which there is no follow up from the Applicant. Trademarkia automatically provides alerts on marks to keep you informed about updates as to the status of your filings. The USPTO will not.
Trademarkia lets you search inside logos, easily oppose conflicting marks, and will help you respond to Office Actions to overcome challenges to your filing during the 12 to 18 months of pendancy of your mark. The USPTO site will not.
Trademarkia will automatically generate alerts for you of deadlines such as international filing deadlines (6 months from the US filing, Office Action response deadlines, Opposition notices, etc.). The USPTO site will not.
In addition, Trademarkia offers a money back guarantee on its service charges in case you are not happy with our service. I hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia & IP Attorney
Wow. So this didn’t make it into the TC50?
Fantastic product (I will be using shortly) and, IMHO, they should have easily won the TC50!
I went through trademarkia trademark application process, it is easy to use, and low cost.
With $159, they prepare my application and submit to USPTO (or State). They also list government filing fee based on if the trademark is filed under Federal or State.
I only need to pay $159 for trademarkia service to prepare my application. Their paralegal will contact me for paying filing fee directly to government at the time when they submit it.
A nice service.
Yes, they need to be upfront with their costs a bit, but that can be resolved guys! Let’s focus on the positive here – this website rocks! I haven’t seen anything like this at all. It’s really awesome – they did a great job!!!!!
Ditto – I this site rocks. And there are so many ancillary services I can think of too for additional rev streams. Nice work guys!
The design of Trademarkia is a direct knock-off of http://www.inkd.com – down to the footer.
A company that promotes trademarking is infringing on the trademark of another company. LOL!
This company seams pretty shady to me.
Good that you noticed the Trademarkia design similarity to Inkd! I assure you that there is nothing out of the ordinary about that. In fact, Kelly Smith (the CEO of Inkd) is a friend of ours and has been helping us on Trademarkia. We really like the Inkd design, and Kelly has provided us with a lot of design recommendations. He is aware that we borrowed a lot of design elements from Inkd. Our co-founder Dongxia Liu worked with Kelly at Creative Office and was the former VP of Engineering at Imagekind. Hence, the similarity of design between us and Inkd. As such, there should be nothing strange about the similarity of our designs.
Kelly Smith, the CEO of inkd and the Creative Office is a friend of ours and has helped us with the design and features of Trademarkia. As such, there is nothing out of the ordinary about the similarity between our designs.
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia
Trademarkia is very complementary to Inkd. Inkd is a great site to find templates in creating high quality print collateral. In contrast, Trademarkia is for protecting the brands, logos and slogans. We hope to one day integrate our site into Inkd more closely.
Similarly, we hope to integrate our content into domain name registrars (e.g., GoDaddy) and logo design company websites (e.g., LogoWorks, 99Designs, etc.). If you think you can use Trademarkia data in your site, let me know. raj@trademarkia.com We are in the early stages of planning an API, RSS, and Affiliate program.
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia
The nav is a direct creative copy of inkd… and the footer too. Come on guys, at least think up a creative design. Just because you are friends doesn’t mean you can be lazy…
Even the homepage left-sidebar of Trademarkia is a copy of the secondary layout of the Inkd…
Sorry, not a direct copy… there’s 8px margin in the nav between elements. My mistake.
We’d be happy to explore different web design templates. Let us know if you know of a great graphic designer. Rest assured, the similarity with inkd is intentional, as described above. No conspiracy there.
Raj
CEO of Trademarkia
I think the interface is good. Searching Trademarks at the USPTO directly can be quite the task.
I think this fee is ok only if they help people with finding classes to their trademark.
Hi William,
We have a simple and easy way for people to understand which classification to file their mark in our standard package because provide a clear description of each classification and subclassification in words rather than USPTO codes when people file a mark through Trademarkia.
We’ll soon have a Gold package on trademarkia in which our partner law firm will pick the best classification and write the optimal description of goods and services. We have this service on our sister site Patent Express right now :
http://www.patentexpress.com/patents/trademark_services_price.aspx
We’ll also have a service to assist trademark filers in responses to Trademark office actions, similar to our feature on Patent Express here :
http://www.patentexpress.com/patents/trademark_office_action_price.aspx
Thanks for the feedback.
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia
Any effort to cut down lawyer fees is a good one. We spent 4x that on our Trademark; and still don’t know if we will get it. That said, I am sure the terms of service for trademarkia state clearly if they make a mistake; oooops you should have paid a lawyer.
In fact, I am an IP attorney and the founder of Trademarkia. We will soon offer a Gold package similar to the previous site that I helped to build called Patent Express. See : http://www.patentexpress.com/patents/trademark_services_price.aspx
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia
I think its a great site; wish it was available before we overpaid our attorneys. Thanks; and good luck.
Are you US only, or do you service Australia?
I searched your site for something indicating this (including the FAQ) but could find nothing….
Trademarkia is currently offering search in the Untied States only, and trademark filings in the United States/State filings only. However, we will be offering foreign registrations in the future. Right now, foreign registrations can be handled through Australian trademark attorneys that we can refer you to through our sister site Patent Express. http://www.patentexpress.com/
Thanks Raj. Your service looks great btw. Can’t wait for it to come to AUS.
@Doug
Ur right, their website looks a lot like inkd’s design and layout IMHO. Interesting…….
A simple Google search shows a lot of other websites that provide many of the same TM filing and search services (legalzoom et al.).
This website seems pretty derivative on both fronts.
legalzoom does provide search service, but that is PAID service.
Trademarkia provides a free online search service.
Yes, Trademarkia’s design is intentionally similar to inkd’s design. See my comment above. That being said, the presentation layer of the Trademarkia is one of the easiest part of the 2 years of hard develoent and data normalization work that went across in acquiring data, planning and building this site.
We have plans on changing the design often once we get a great graphic designer/front end developer on the founding Trademarkia team. We are in search for such a talent of the highest caliber. If you like the Trademarkia concept, see it’s potential (we have a lot more amazing features in the pipeline) and are a superstar front end/graphic designer who wants to be part of the exciting 3 person, prefunded, Trademarkia founding team, please send me your resume at raj@trademarkia.com for consideration. Thanks for your feedback.
Raj
Ops, wrong blog post.
Still, would like to know the answer anyway
.
Jonathan, once we get funded, we’ll look to acquire international trademarks and state trademarks on our site as well. For now, you can file for U.S. protection of your business name, slogan, or logo through Trademarkia. Kind regards, Raj
I guess I’m confused. What’s the value add over just searching http://uspto.gov ?
Trademarkia has indexed more information than the USPTO public search. For example, marks older than 1930, not found on the USPTO Tess search, and searching inside of logos (data not on searchable on the USPTO site). Soon, once we finish the 2009 data import, users will be able to sign up for alerts on notifications of status change of their marks and visually monitor against infringing marks. As such, Trademarkia is a better search engine than the USPTO site itself.
Furthermore, trademarkia offers a visual search for data and is going to integrate international and state mark search capabilities. In addition, Trademarkia let’s you search for AND purchase/reapply for abandoned and expired trademarks, something that the USPTO does not do directly themselves in an integrated way.
I checked one trademark “Wordbee”. The information is dangerously incomplete. Out of the 3 international classes you list just one. Out of the trademark owners you indicate just one. The registration date is omitted. Checking on the USPTO site you’ll find all data. Accuracy and completeness of data is key to IP search services.
Hi Steve,
Trademarkia only lists the latest owner of the mark and the first class. The other two owners appear to be former owners. With regard to the international classes, we do the most current class based on the latest owner.
That being said, we’re going to analyze the data a bit more and make sure the data for this record is showing correctly.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Kind regards,
Raj
Note: We’re in the process of adding the 2009 data, that will be added in the next 3 weeks, and the site will automatically be updated every day once that data is live.
ps.. it appears that there was a status change on this ‘Wordbee’ mark in July 2009. We haven’t updated the data for 2009 yet, and that may be the problem. We are in the process of updating the site for 2009 data, and the site will be updated daily as is the USPTO site once the 2009 data import is complete. Right now, the site is updated as of December 31, 2008. I expect the 2009 data to be upload in trademarkia by October 15, 2009 or sooner. From there, the site will be refreshed daily as new updates come in from the USPTO.
kind regards,
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia
Trademark
Raj. Except for the registration details, the other data was already present in the filing last year.
Anyway, the site is a great idea and makes it easy for non-lawyers to search.
I was involved in building one of the today’s top international trademark search platforms (with over 40 TM databases incl. us pto). From there I know how difficult it is to build TM databases. Lawyers won’t forgive you any errors.
Anyway, good luck! And I suggest you quickly add CTM marks for us Europeans.
Thanks for the feedback Steve,
I’ll repost on this thread once the 2009 data is in place and refreshing daily. I’ll look into the other data you mention as well. Why do you think it would be useful to list past owners of trademarks in addition to the latest/most current owner?
Our site, as currently designed, is aimed as a consumer site. For this reason, we have a free search to our data rather than a subscription based search like the Big 3. However, an enterprise version of Trademarkia is being considered on our roadmap through unique features we have on our roadmap.
We do want to add CTM marks for Europe as well as other international/state marks, and are looking to acquire such data through partnerships. It seems you might have experience in this area. If so, I’d like to talk with you, email me at raj@trademarkia.com and we can set up a time to discuss.
I’ll repost on this thread after we have reconciled the 2009 data and looked into the ownership data info more closely to ensure that we are not omitting joint owners. We have purposefully left off previous owners on Trademarkia as we felt that such information would be too confusing for consumers.
Thanks once again.
Kind regards,
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia & IP Attorney
This could be useful
If you have a business and your trademarks are important to you, why risk them with a automated website?
Why not just go straight to an experienced attorney and get it done right the first time. I know from previous experiences with legal matters that representing oneself is fraught with unseen dangers that the inexperienced fall into.
For example, filing for a trademark is a little like filing a law suit. The initial forms are relatively simple to fill out, however, the real difficulties lie in the interaction with other parties, the court/USPTO, etc.. Some things just can’t be automated. If I start off with an automated and inexperienced application, then run into trouble and eventually have to seek the assistance of an attorney, wouldn’t it have been better to simply begin with the attorney in the beginning? It could cost more the attorney to unravel my previous errors that I made because I was too cheap to go to him/her in the first place.
I remain skeptical of websites that offer legal services, just as much as I would be skeptical of a website that diagnosed cancer simply by filling out a few forms. My previous experiences in legal matters (and watching friends get burned when attempted to represent themselves) have convinced that it is best to seek legal advice and services from a lawyer, not an algorithm.
This brings up another question about these types of websites regarding the unauthorized practice of law…. but that is for another post.
Dougy,
I tend to agree with a lot of what you say, and share your sentiments as a whole. A lawyer can discuss options and provide strategy and legal advice. A potential client should always go with who they trust. Attorneys are members of the state bar and can advise on sometimes tricky issues of strategy, ownership, and transfer. Trademarkia is a great complement to that, the same way WebMD is for health care. It arms consumers with more information than they otherwise would have prior to seeing a professional.
Raj Abhyanker, JD
CEO of Trademarkia.com
Member of the State Bar of California & Minnesota
USPTO Bar #45,474
To follow up to this thread, Trademarkia is now updated with 2009 data, and we have just rolled out a new wildcard search. See our blog for more :
http://trademarkia.wordpress.com/
Thanks for the great feedback!
Raj Abhyanker
CEO of Trademarkia