TM Search Engine

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has recently launched a significant update (beta version) to its TMview search platform (multinational trademark search platform) by making numerous crucial improvements. The team behind the platform has shared several tips on making the most of the new features in an exclusive guest post and has also called for the feedback of practitioners to make sure the platform meets the needs of the trademark community in the most effective manner.

OVERVIEW

Somewhere around ten years ago, TMview had taken its initial steps to the online world. It began its journey rather modestly with trademark data and information from only a few EU IP offices. At present, TMview is the world’s largest and free trademark database, having more than 53 million trademarks from 68 of its IP offices participants across the globe.  DesignView, a design search platform, joined TMview in the year 2012. Currently, DesignView has somewhere around 15 million designs.

Both DesignView and TMview support 20 different electronic filing systems with their databases incorporated into the EUIPO’s IP Enforcement Portal to fight against the issues of Intellectual Property Infringement and counterfeiting. For quite a while now, both these platforms have become global and contain data from more non-EU IP offices than the EU ones, with each available in the participating office’s official language.

For making progress and leading towards the ultimate path of success, one has to keep moving ahead. Since 2016, the experts from the EU‘s IP offices and user associations have been working hard to improve both TMview and DesignView by enhancing their data quality and usability. The prime focus of the entire improvement process was on the users with an approach based on design thinking. Through rigorous prototype testing and need-finding techniques, the project team could better understand the end-user mindset.

On 1st October 2019, the beta version of the new TMview platform was successfully launched, which is a joint ‘work in progress’ shared by the EUIPO with the user community. For the success and efficient working of the project, in the long run, user feedback and comments can be shared by clicking on the button present at the bottom of each page.

The new TMview platform is still the same as before, but with enhanced functionalities, features, and many new options to make your search experience quicker, simpler, and better in all aspects. So, let’s have a look at a few tips and tactics that shall help you significantly in making the most out of the new functionalities and interface.

  1. The beta version of the TMview platform has enhanced a ‘Contains’ mode to search for trademark denomination efficiently. It implies that the search results now show the trademarks in which the searched words appear partly or entirely within the trademark denomination.
  2. The users can now effectively select the fields that they want to appear on the front page and can even ‘pin’ the search fields from the advanced search to the front page. With this kind of functionality, users can save time and customize the front page.
  3. TMview has made the definition of Nice and Vienna classes more accurate. For instance – the users can now search for a trademark by defining the combination of classes (i.e., Class 5 and Class 43)
  4. The platform efficiently keeps a record of the previous searches on the front page, which enables the users to keep track of them.
  5. The automatic ordering of results based on the degree of similarity to the search term/terms is available in the new version. It implies that the trademarks with identical denominations shall appear on the top of the search results.
  6. The users can use dynamic filters available alongside the search results to find the trademarks they are looking for faster.
  7. The platform allows users to access more information about the listed trademarks on the search results page by simply expanding a row. They can view information like the scope of Trademark Protection, including goods and service terms.
  8. There is an additional view on the results page featuring four tabs with statistical information consisting of trademark types, trademark status, territories, and the classes of listed applications.
  9. If the users require to search using a trademark image found on the platform, there isn’t any need to download the image, as all they have to do is hover over the image and click on the ‘Search for similar images’ button.
  10. The users can group and compare the results that they are most interested in by clicking on the ‘compare’ button available on the results page.
  11. With enhanced export functionality, the beta version of the new TMview platform enables the users to export the files in Word format and even select among different Word layouts.