Searching for International Trademarks - a tip!

Had an "a-ha!" moment today while searching for international trademarks. The World Intellectual Propery Organization (WIPO) has a cool website for searching international trademarks. You can find it here: http://www.wipo.int/ipdl/en/search/madrid/search-struct.jsp

The A-ha part was realizing today that to narrow the search to show only trademarks where the product is classified as jewelry, use the "Nice Classification" of "14".

Secondary A-ha and a bit more technical, is, if you are familiar with using "design codes" on the US trademark site, these translate into the Vienna classification codes on the WIPO site. With US trademarks, they assign "design codes" to the graphic elements in a trademark. For instance, if the trademark is just a picture of a flower, then you can look in the design code manual and see that code "050525" is for flower shapes. On the WIPO site, use the first 4 digits, so the Vienna Classification for a flower shape is "0505". So, as an example to search for international trademarks for jewelry that show the shape of a flower, enter "14" in the "Nice classification" box and "0505" in the Vienna classification. This example brings up 225 trademarks that you can view, all having some kind of flower element in the design of the trademark and all having at least some products that are jewelry.

Happy trademark hunting!