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!

Coro trademark abandoned!

As of January of this year the last remaining "live" Coro trademark has been abandoned. Last owned by FGX International (they make Foster Grant Sunglasses), they have let the trademark for Coro lapse. In recent news I saw that they had plans to sell their jewelry division.

So, at this point, searching "Coro" in the US Trademark listings, shows that all of the jewelry Coro trademarks (just the ones that are exactly the name Coro), are listed as "dead", either expired or abandoned.

Is Richelieu jewelry marked?

I have heard that Richelieu jewelry is not often marked. Most of the ads I have looked at show attached tags. I do know that the jewelry is sometimes marked, but found it interesting that in their trademark filing in 1943, they state that "The trade-mark is applied or affixed to the goods by attaching thereto a tag on which the trade-mark is shown" So, by their description both methods were used.

Searching European Trademarks

I ran across the official website recently for the Trade Marks and Designs Registration Office for the European Union. It describes the office as the European Union agency responsible for registering trade marks and designs that are valid in all 27 countries of the EU.

There are searchable databases - start here

I haven't seen specifically how far back the database goes, but they do mention that the office was created in 1996. I need to dig around some more to see if I can find the actual date range of data included in the database...so more on that later, if I manage to dig up the info

Trademark searching tip

Here's a tip for limiting trademark searches to only trademarks that are classified in the "jewelry" category of goods and services. Start by selecting the "Structured Search" option from the main Trademark page. Start at http://www.uspto.gov/, select "Trademarks", "Search TM database" and then "Structured Search".

In my example, I was searching for the trademark "FCA", so I put that in the first part - leave the field as "All", then make sure that you have the "AND" option selected. The fill in the word "jewelry" in the second line with "Goods and Services" selected for the Field name. This limits your search results to trademarks that have your search term (in this case for me, FCA), and that fall into the category of jewelry.

(click the graphic below to see the full graphic if the right side is cut off on your screen - I didn't want to make is too small to read so I didn't shrink it to fit)