Legal Terms

trademark search

An investigation to discover potential conflicts between a proposed trademark or service mark and any marks already in use in the marketplace. Preferably done before a proposed mark is used, a trademark search reduces the possibility of inadvertently infringing a mark belonging to another. Businesses can conduct trademark searches themselves, either manually in a Patent and Trademark Depository library, through a computer in one of the online trademark databases (for a fee) or by hiring a search firm to do the search for them.