Author: Priya Gandham

Understanding the types of trademark clearance searches that are right for your business.

What is a clearance check?

Before registering a trade mark, we always recommend conducting a clearance check to help identify any similar or identical trade marks that are already operating in the same market as you.

Clearance checks can provide you with a “road map” to help you navigate any potential conflicting pre-existing trade marks. This can help mitigate the risks and as such, avoid you receiving any actions that can stop you from using or registering your brand.

At Brandsmiths we can offer different types of searches to help you, depending on your budget.

The two main types are:

1. Quick Searches – We can conduct a quick identical search using an online database and identify any identical hits or in some cases, highly similar trade marks (depending on the trade mark). This type of search only identifies the highest risks.
2. Full Searches – in a full clearance, we obtain the search data from a third party who use an algorithm to identify different variations of the proposed mark. As a result, this type of search is more conclusive as it will identify low, medium and high risks marks. In this type of search, we also provide a full risk report and advice on how to mitigate the risks identified.

Contact us

To learn more about IP issues, check out our intellectual property page and trade mark page.

If you would like further information about clearance checks and how Brandsmiths can help you protect your brand, please get in touch with Priya Gandham, Chartered Trade Mark Attorney.

info@brandsmiths.co.uk