: Is there any service where you can check your designed logo against trademarked logos? Say if I design a logo, there is the chance that it may be to similar to that of a trademarked logo

@Lengel450

Using Tin Eye or google images does not work well. It rarely finds anything useful.

Bottom line is that you get what you pay for. You can certainly go to the USPTO.com and look up by design code for free. You also have little to no chance of knowing how to do that because it's extremely confusing even for search professionals.

One of the reasons you don't see much about online searching for logos is because in the past it's been very expensive. Often costing over ,000. Now with image recognition the price has come down. WARNING: if someone is doing ONLY image recognition they are probably not giving you a good service. You need a combination of image recognition and searching knowledge/design code searching.

Our service has been around over 20 years and we only recently started doing these type of searches as we didn't feel we could give the proper value, but now with image recognition/design code hybrid we are able to offer a fantastic product for under 0. Feel free to visit our site and see our Creative Trademark logo search page.

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@Cody3331749

If you use the 'Tin Eye' plugin for your browser then you can quickly look up an image and 'those like it'.

For instance, if you right-click on your profile picture and go to Tin-Eye you get 54 results:
www.tineye.com/search/bcaf042afe81bf42426d4da3c06dc4dbe8e03197/
Those images are mostly different to yours, but 'similar'.

Your mileage may vary, however, you will be able to do a quick but not exhaustive check of 2 billion images in a single right-click with this ever-so-neat plugin. (Beat that you expensive humans!) It will also give you links to where the same/similar image is used.

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@Kevin459

Drawing on a point that Alan Gilbertson made, you need to ascertain whether you NEED to do this. A lot of people will pay the fees and do the search without consideration because they are afraid of legal consequences. The truth is, as Alan wrote, is there a confusion factor?

For example, (hypothetical) I design a logo for a Law firm. They are called Mullins Law Firm. If I do a logo that is a large M with the words Mullins Law Firm written underneath in black, is my company likely to 'steal' business from McDonalds because the brands will be confused. No. The two companies are in different fields, I don't think many people will be entering the Mullins reception to order a Big Mac. Even if they did bear a striking similarity, Mullins Law Firm caters for clients in and about a small area so are McDonalds really going to waste their time with legal proceedings? However, if in fact Mullins Law Firm was Mullins Burger Bar and the area that they served was close to a National Level, where business would almost be certainly stolen from McDonalds (even by indirect association) then there probably would be legal proceedings.

I had this discussion in my Agency just the other day, and the fact is, that unless you provide a direct competition to a business of which you have a similar logo, there isn't going to be any repercussions, or it's highly unlikely anyway...

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@BetL875

It is an intensive process, takes a while, and is expensive. There are companies that do little else, and will charge you handsomely. The USPTO (Patents and Trademark office) has search facilities on its website that will allow you do search for yourself without a fee but considerable cost in time. I assume that similar facilities exist for other economic regions, but don't have experience with them.

The bottom line is that, like patent search, it takes care and time.

It's not all gloomy, though. The essence of trademark violation is that someone might confuse your brand with some already-registered competitor. In most cases, that means that you can narrow your search to companies in roughly the same line of business and (provided you don't do something egregious like using a nice curvy swoosh for your new line of athletic footwear) not have a problem.

For SMBs (small and medium businesses) with only a local presence, this is seldom much of an issue, but if you're a web startup or have national or international ambitions, it is highly recommended that you invest the time and money up front to avoid marketing embarrassment and/or legal expense later.

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