Searching the registers
Four free, official databases cover most of what a small business needs to look at. None of them will tell you whether you are clear. All of them will tell you whether to stop and think.
| Register | Covers | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| USPTO | United States federal registrations and applications | Federal only. US common-law rights arise from use and are not in here at all |
| TMview / EUIPO | EU trade marks plus many national offices in one search | The broadest single search available free. Coverage per office varies and lags |
| UK IPO | United Kingdom registrations and applications | Separate from the EU register since Brexit; an EU mark no longer covers the UK |
| WIPO Global Brand Database | International registrations plus many national collections | Good for a first sweep across many territories; not authoritative for any one of them |
How to search so the result means something
- Search the distinctive element, not the whole name. In
Northwind Ledger Ltd, the word doing the work isNorthwind. Searching the full string finds nothing and proves nothing. - Use the wildcard. Most registers support one.
northwind*surfaces the compounds and suffixed variants an exact search hides. - Search what it sounds like. Write down three spellings a stranger might produce after hearing the name once, and search each.
- Do not filter to one class on the first pass. Look at everything, then judge whether the goods are related. Filtering early is how people miss the conflict in the class next door.
- Read the status, not just the hit. A dead, abandoned or expired mark is not an obstacle. A pending application is.
For each hit worth attention: what is the mark exactly, what is its status (live, pending, dead), what goods and services does the specification actually list, who owns it, and what is the filing date. The specification is the important one and the one people skip — the class number is a heading, and the listed goods are the substance.
What none of them show
Unregistered rights. A business trading under a name for years without registering anything can still stop you, in jurisdictions that protect goodwill built by use. No register contains them, so the search that finds them is an ordinary web search plus the company register for the countries you will trade in. Do that search too, and treat a long-established trading name as a real obstacle rather than an absence in a database.
Questions
How many variants is enough?
A workable floor is the exact name, a wildcard on the distinctive element, two or three plausible misspellings, and any homophone. If that turns up nothing in the relevant trades across your intended markets, you have a candidate worth a professional search rather than a conclusion.
A mark is registered but the owner seems to have stopped trading.
A registration stays enforceable until it is removed, and a dormant owner can still oppose. There are procedures for cancelling marks unused for a continuous period, but they take time and money and are not something to rely on before adopting a name. An apparently unused registration is a reason to take advice, not a green light.
Do I need to search in every country in the world?
No. Search the markets you will actually operate in over the next few years. Trademark rights are territorial, so a conflict in a market you will never enter is not your problem — and a market you enter later without checking very much is.
Related
- Why an exact match is the wrong testWhat the registers cannot tell you, and why
- What a class actually coversReading a specification properly
Reviewed 2026-09-20. Reference material for people choosing a name; it is not legal advice.