Markify launches powerful trademark and domain services at INTA 2012

May 6, 2012 | Benoit Fallenius | No Comments »

The last months we’ve been busy building a whole set of new search and monitoring services for trademarks and domain names. Some of these services are tailored for start-ups and brand owners and some for the trademark professionals.

At the same time we have added some useful trademark and domain databases.

The launch of these services is taking place at the opening of INTA 2012 in May in Washington DC.

The new services and databases have been bundled into three packages with a very competitive  pricing:

1. Brand Protect Kit at $5/month

Every living brand deserves to be protected.

Our new Brand Protect Kit is designed to give the brand owner a broad protection at a very little cost. The package includes four different watch and monitoring services, covering both trademarks and domain names on a global scale:

  • Trademark watch (1) for the US , EU (CTM) and International (WIPO) – Finding 99% of conufsingly similar new trademark applications. Only with Markify.
  • Global domain name watch (1) – Finding conufsingly similar new domains
  • Competitor/Owner monitoring (4) – Get alerted about new trademark applications by your competitors
  • Category monitoring (4) – A combined class and key word monitoring. Only with Markify.

Read more in the blog post Global domain and trademark watch included in new Brand Protect Kit

2. Pro Watch Platform at $5/month

The new Pro Watch Platform is a trademark and domain name watch service, designed both for the inhouse attorney and for the law firm that wishes to give all its’ clients a powerful Brand Protect Kit.

For only $50/month you can easily create 25 Brand Protect Kits, all in your custom branding. A powerful tool to give clients a “first line” protection against trademark infringement.

Read more in the blog post Trademark attorneys can now afford to give all clients a global watch & monitoring service

3. Comprehensive Search Reports at $100

I have talked to a lot of trademark attorneys serving small and medium sized businesses  They all say the same thing: clients can’t afford to spend +$500 on a comprehensive search before they do their application for a trademark registration.

We set out to change this. So we added US common law , Global domain name (200 TLDs) and WIPO to our already existing databases USPTO and CTM. Then we put the price tag at $100.

Every brand deserves a safe start .

Read more in the blog post Now anyone can afford a Comprehensive Search Report

Effects on current services

The free trademark search result list will be limited to the “Very similar” results. It will continue to show how many total results each search produced but the list will only display the “Very similar” results.

After studying thousands of free trademark search users we think this change won’t affect most users. The vast majority are only looking at the first couple of result pages, where you find the “Very similar” results. The rest of the results are generally only studied by trademark attorneys working on a clearance report.

The Free trademark watch for USPTO and CTM remains untouched.

All current Pro customers are being transferred to the new Pro platform.

Our API users will affected in the same way as the free search is affected. The API will from now give you access to the “Very similar” results.

If you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Read about all the new services launched by Markify at INTA 2012:

Trademark attorneys can now afford to give all clients a global watch & monitoring service

Global domain and trademark watch included in new Brand Protect Kit

Now anyone can afford a Comprehensive Search Report

Now anyone can afford a Comprehensive Search Report

| Benoit Fallenius | No Comments »

The Markify trademark search has since the start 18 months ago been recognized as the most accurate and comprehensive in terms of finding confusingly similar trademarks. Now we add new databases and new features to make it even more useful in our two main markets: the US and the EU.

To our current databases, USPTO and CTM, we now add:

  • US common law – A search among more than 15 million registered US businesses.
  • Domain names –  Confusingly similar domain names in .com, .net, .org, .info, .us and .biz. Identical hits from approx. 200 ccTLDs.
  • WIPO – More than 600.000 international trademarks.

The new Comprehensive Search Report from Markify has four features no other search provider have:

1. Superior accuracy

We are the only search provider that can give you a result list that finds 99% of all confusingly similar trademarks (see benchmark report where Markify was ranked number 1.

Our result list also contain much less “noise” than other full availability reports. Instead of going through a list of say 2.000 results, you get a list of 300 results. This ofcourse saves you lots of time.

How is it possible for us to give you all the relevant results but skip the bad ones?

The Markify trademark search s is a built on a statistical method using more than 10.000 actual cases where a likelihood of confusion has been established by a governement official, in the US or in Europe.

To our knowledge, no other trademark search algorithm is built like that.

2. Relevance ranked results

The Markify Comprehensive Search Reports are relevance ranked (so is in fact the free trademark search also). This means that you in most cases will find your potential conflicts on the first pages. Talk about time saving.

The relevance ranking is also built on the statistical case law data.

3. Custom branding

You can easily customize the report and put your own branding on it if you choose. Once you have bought the data, you can customize and download as many variants of the report as you like.

4. Unmatched price: $100

We believe every brand deserves a safe start.

Most entrepreneurs and start-ups work on a very tight budget. Until now most of them have skipped a full availability search, because a price of $300-$600 has not seem attractive.

We aim to change that. We start by putting a rock-bottom low price on our two Comprehensivie Search Report packages: only $100 for the US Comprehensive or the EU Comprehensive.

Read about the other new services launched by Markify in May:

Trademark attorneys can now afford to give all clients a global watch & monitoring service

Global domain and trademark watch included in new Brand Protect Kit

Markify launches powerful trademark and domain services at INTA 2012

Trademark attorneys can now afford to give all clients a global watch & monitoring service

| Benoit Fallenius | No Comments »

The new Pro Watch Platform is a trademark and domain name watch service, designed both for the inhouse attorney and for the law firm that wishes to gíve to all its’ clients a powerful Brand Protect Kit.

The Pro platform has three main features:

1. Broad coverage at an unmatched price

With just one Pro subscription, priced at $50/month, you get the possibillity to create 25 custom branded Brand Protect Kits.  You get a total of:

●        25 Global domain name watch finding conufsingly similar new domains

●        25 Trademark watch for the US , EU (CTM) and International (WIPO)

●        100 Competitor/Owner monitoring

●        100 Category monitoring

You don’t have to bundle the monitoring and watch data into Brand Protect Kits. You can use them any way you want.

See the Brand Protect Kit blog post for details of the different watch and monitoring services or go directly to the free 30-day Pro trial sign-up page.

You also get 100 Status monitoring, where you get alerts on status changes or any other changes to a trademark application or registered trademark.

2. Create custom branded reports

Now there is a very easy to use online tool for creating custom branded watch and monitoring reports to all your clients.

The report tool let’s you a choose what results to include, and you can comment on every result. Then you can download the report in Excel or PDF. You can create as many reports as you want built on the data you have bought.

3. Comprehensive Search Reports at a 25% discount

With a Pro subscription you get a good discount on all Comprehensive Search Reports. Instead of the already low $100 you pay only $75.

Read about the other new services launched by Markify in May:

Now anyone can afford a Comprehensive Search Report

Global domain and trademark watch included in new Brand Protect Kit

Markify launches powerful trademark and domain services at INTA 2012

Global domain and trademark watch included in new Brand Protect Kit

| Benoit Fallenius | No Comments »

We have new motto for our watch and monitoring services:

Every living brand deserves to be protected.

Our new Brand Protect Kit is priced and designed to deliver on that motto. For only $5/month the brand owner gets a broad, “first-line” brand  protection. The package includes four different watch and monitoring services, covering both trademarks and domain names on a global scale:

Trademark watch

(1 watched mark per Kit)

Earlier we only had USPTO (US federal) and CTM (EU) in our trademark monitor service. Now we have added the large international database WIPO. This is still the only trademark watch service that finds 99% of new confusingly similar trademark applications.

Global domain name watch

(1 watched domain name per Kit)

This is a new flagship service we believe many brand owners will find attractive. Compared to other domain name monitoring services ours also finds new, confusingly similar domain names in the big TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .us, .info and .biz). Add to that an identical watch of around 200 ccTLDs, and you have a domain name monitoring service we believe is hard to beat.

Owner/competitor monitorint

(5 monitored owners per Kit)

When a company applies for a trademark registration, it is often a very early signal of that they are planning something new. To watch what trademarks your competitors or other trademark owners tries to register is a a good source of intelligence.

Category monitoring

(5 monitored categories per Kit)

This is a new kind of product we believe is quite unique. Here you monitor every new trademark application in the trademark classes you are interested in. Then you add one or several key words to filter out the relevant trademark applications.

Every week you will get an email with a summary of the results, and you’ll find the full report in  your web control panel.

All this for only $5/month. To low? Maybe, but we would rather see many companies protecting their brands and not just the big ones.

Read about the other new services launched by Markify in May:

Now anyone can afford a Comprehensive Search Report

Trademark attorneys can now afford to give all clients a global watch & monitoring service

Markify launches powerful trademark and domain services at INTA 2012

The top 100 trademark words 2011

February 2, 2012 | Benoit Fallenius | Comments Closed

If you look at all USPTO trademark filings during 2011, you find 130.000 different “words”. 90 percent of these words are used less than 5 times, like QUORA and SINGER. But the top 10 percent are used as many as 2000 times, like LIFE and HEALTH.

If you are thinking of a new name for a business or trademark, you should probably avoid all these words. They are so common that they are very weak as trademark components.

The list has few surprises so we compared it with 2006 and found only two new, very common trademark words. Can you guess which ones? (Answer at bottom of blog post)

We also compared this list with a similar list for EU trademarks (CTM/OHIM), but found no major differences.

We have eliminated the most common “stop words” like  THE, IS, AT, YOU, AND etc, and some company attributes like INC, COMPANY and GROUP.

The top 100 trademark words 2011:

1 life 51 usa
2 solutions 52 x
3 world 53 day
4 one 54 b
5 love 55 city
6 care 56 bar
7 health 57 house
8 new 58 black
9 american 59 food
10 power 60 do
11 home 61 social
12 green 62 our
13 n 63 natural
14 go 64 out
15 energy 65 foundation
16 t 66 fresh
17 smart 67 plus
18 good 68 water
19 be 69 america
20 all 70 kids
21 up 71 first
22 services 72 music
23 center 73 m
24 me 74 art
25 no 75 little
26 real 76 1
27 live 77 make
28 time 78 media
29 get 79 service
30 big 80 c
31 club 81 not
32 business 82 free
33 e 83 star
34 management 84 great
35 pro 85 healthy
36 better 86 way
37 network 87 can
38 international 88 systems
39 technology 89 sports
40 its 90 play
41 global 91 fitness
42 blue 92 baby
43 red 93 rock
44 co 94 mobile
45 system 95 family
46 just 96 clean
47 best 97 living
48 s 98 where
49 design 99 people
50 more 100 that

The two new words on the list of fop 100 trademark words 2011, when compared to 2006, is number 61 and 94. Not very surprising.

The world’s first comprehensive trademark search API

January 16, 2012 | Benoit Fallenius | Comments Closed

Markify now releases the world’s first comprehensive trademark search API. It’s fast and free and it covers the US and the EU.

We have debated internally quite a bit about how much you can and should cannibalize on your own business. Not an easy discussion.

A lot of the big on-line companies have very restricted APIs. After reading this very good blog post about APIs, we decided to go the other way.

So what do you get from the Markify trademark search API?

  1. The world’s most accurate trademark search, finding 99% of confusingly similar trademarks.
  2. Results in similarity order. No one else does this.
  3. Daily updated trademark data from the USPTO and from the large pan-European database OHIM/CTM
  4. Fast and free. Average response times are less than 0.9 seconds.

Who do we think should be interested?

  • Domain name registrars – Let your users do a fast trademark search to make sure they can use the domain name for their new business. We believe this will sell more domains to business oriented users. How? The level of trust and service will result in more buys than the occasional possible trademark conflict.
  • Law firms – Become more time and cost efficient towards your trademark search/clearance clients.
  • Legal and docketing software companies – You already have a great software and a client base. So now you can easily integrate the world’s most accurate trademark search for USPTO and OHIM/CTM.
  • Developers - You have an idea of a mash-up or a new way to use the trademark search engine? We will love to hear about it.

You find instructions, rules and documentation for the trademark search API here

Don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll try to help you the best we can. And we love feedback! Send me a mail at my first name followed by our domain name.

Best tips to start-ups on trademark and new business name

January 13, 2012 | Benoit Fallenius | Comments Closed

In an interview with ArcticStartup I was asked to come up with my best tips to start-ups regarding trademark and their new business name:

1. Choose a name that can be trademarked.

Why? You will avoid conflicts, enable expansion and sleep better. There are two basic requirements on your new trademark:

a) It should not be generic in your business area. The name “CoolApps” is generic if you’re going to deliver a new marketplace for apps.

b) No one else should be using a “confusingly similar” trademark in your potential markets. Start your search at markify.com for confusingly similar marks. Avoid all similar marks that are in your line of business. If you are uncertain, contact a trademark attorney.

2. Buy all relevant domain names.

a) For most international start-ups that means a .com. Don’t only look for available domain names. Even if the domain name is taken, it often is for sale. Average prices for domain names at auctions are $500

b) Buy 5-10 typos.

c) Buy at least 5-10 country extensions (ccTLDs). Choose the biggest markets where you think you may expand.

3. Register the trademark in your primary market.

In Europe choose the Pan-European CTM trademark, which covers 27 EU countries for a fee of 850 Euros.

In the US a USPTO trademark costs $325.

4. Watch and protect your trademark.

If there is a new confusingly similar application you should act upon it. So sign up for a free trademark watch at Markify.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you think I can help

The fastest built brands in the world

January 12, 2012 | Benoit Fallenius | Comments Closed

It struck me this morning that the US presidential candidates probably are the fastest built brands in the world. In just a couple of months they become strong global brands. The irony is that all of these new brands except one, probably Romney, will soon start to fade away.

A lot of us Europeans follow not only our own elections but also the US ones. And the US presidential race is in many ways a more fascinating show than our own, comparably duller elections. Since an election in a democracy is all about communication, I think it’s interesting to look at it from a brand perspective.

What was the global brand recognition for “Romney”, “Gingrich” and “Paul” say six months ago? Probably close to zero. Today at least Romney and Gingrich are well known brands even outside the US.

A commercial brand could never hope to get this kind of brand recognition in such a short time. How can these brands be built so fast? The reasons are pretty obvious:

  1. Press coverage – The amount of PR these brands get is unheard of. They dominate the news in the US and get a lot of attention in the rest of the world. If a commercial brand gets this kind of press, it’s probably in big trouble (think Enron, Lehman Brothers)
  2. Money spent – Romney has +$56 million USD in his pocket to fight Obama’s $100 million. Gingrich has only 5 Million…
  3. Message importance – We, the audience, care about these brands right away because what they say matters, it could affect our lives. Most brands can’t achieve this kind of “engagement level” in their first couple of years.

Democracy must cost, but from a branding perspective it’s hard not to think that all this money and effort could be spent slightly different. There are two big brands that seem to live completely in the shadow of the presidential candidates: the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

There you have two brands that won’t fade away any time soon, but they are surprisingly weak in the election process.

These two brands suffer from classical branding problems, like weak differentiation and lack of relevance and drive. An interesting analysis even compares the brand “the Republican Party” with “New Coke”.

I believe a shift towards stronger and more differentiated “umbrella brands”, like Republican and Democrat, would both serve the long-term democratic process and the more temporary brands of the presidential candidates.

Markify is celebrating a fantastic year of start-up experiences

December 31, 2011 | Benoit Fallenius | Comments Closed

When we launched Markify a year ago we had been building our trademark similarity algorithm for more than two years. Why did it take so long? The simple answer is that our ambition was to build the world’s best trademark search engine.

The more complex answer is that I was convinced that to launch with an inferior product would not give us a real test of Markify. It would not test if we had a “minimum viable product“, to speak Eric Ries language.

But it was not an easy decision. We had a lot of discussion in the team on when to launch, and the term “good enough” was always challenging “the world’s best trademark search engine”.

So the feeling  when we finally launched in December 2010 was one of great relief and anticipation.  Since then everything has gone much faster, our learning curve has accelerated and we are having so much more fun!

Some of Markify’s highlights 2011:

  • Reaching more than 100.000 users every month, and rising, that are doing comprehensive trademark and domain name searches.
  • Reaching 99% accuracy with our trademark search algorithm.
  • Becoming number 1 in the US benchmark of trademark search services.
  • Getting that amazing response from so many trademark attorneys at the INTA meeting in San Francisco in May.
  • Lauch of the world’s first free comprehensive trademark watch, together with the Pro watch for trademark attorneys.

What has been most challenging 2011?

I think Steve Blank put it best: “A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”

We have been fortunate to have very good investors in the Nordic VC firm CNCP. But VC money is NOT a business model, even if you are sometimes lead to believe that.

To balance business development and product development. That has been and will be our greatest challenge going forward.

When Markify now moves into 2012, I can promise you some soon-to-come exciting new releases. And I believe these will have the right mix of a great product and a good business opportunity – for both you and us.

Two issues you won’t hear in the sales pitch for new gTLDs

December 27, 2011 | Benoit Fallenius | Comments Closed

With only 15 days left until ICANN opens the gate for another 1000 top level domains, my guess is that most big brands now plan to buy their own gTLD. Why? Like I wrote in an earlier blog post: Mostly for defensive reasons. They don’t  want to risk that anyone else would use their brand as a top level domain.

Some trademark holders, with really famous, well-known trademarks, will be able to stop others from getting the tld. But most trademark owners will not be able to stop an application, because they don’t have all the trademark rights (all classes, all markets). The only certain way to stop anyone from using your brand as a tld will be to buy the tld yourself.
If you are considering buying your dot brand gtld, there are lots of firms who want to help you with this. But there are two issues, one short term and one long term, they will downplay which every aspiring “dot brand” should beware of.

Short term issue: It will be difficult for a brand to communicate the new url string

This might seem trivial but I think it will be a major issue in the beginning.

Take the airline SAS. They don’t own the “www.sas.com” url, so they might be interested in a top level domain of their own like “.sas”. But how shall they communicate it the first couple of years, before broad customer groups get used to the new gtlds?

Three alternative ways to communicate the url string:

1. “Visit us at .sas” – It is difficult to understand that it is a url. A single dot to indicate where you live online will maybe not be enough for large groups of consumers.
2. “Visit us at www.sas” – Feel like something is missing, right? Where is the domain extension?
3. “Visit us at http://www.sas” – Doesn’t make things easier, just longer.

My guess is that most brands who invest in their own gtld will choose number 1, the “.sas” alternative. They will try to emphasize the dot graphically, but it will take time before people understand and appreciate the short url.

After a few years people have learnt that some of the big brands have their own gtld and that is indicated by a dot.

Advice: Wait with the launch of your new .brand url until your target groups understand the new url concept.

Long term issue: People use automatic suggestions and search results instead of url’s

A lot of people access url’s by typing the brand name in the browser search box. At that point they get automatic suggestions, based on frequency and individual habits.

If your brand is among these suggestions, the actual url means less. If you are not among the suggestions, you should as a big brand be among the presented search results. And that has less and less to do with your actual url, and more and more to do with marketing and good SEO.

This development will of course continue. Browsers and search engines will become increasingly smarter (Apple’s Siri is a great example) and the need to know the url will continue to diminish.

Domain names will stay important but branding and trademarks will once again have the upper hand.

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