Blog e notizie

Today we are launching an upgraded design of our logged in pages. Our two main objectives with the new design have been to:

• make the site easier to access for first time users.
• make the work with large reports easier and faster. 

You will find most things where they used to be but there are some important news:

1. Foldable left navigation bar to save valuable space. 

Since many of our trademark search reports are quite broad, we decided to let the left navigation bar fold when it was not used. This way you can see more of the result table without having to scroll left-right. 

Note that the navigation bar can be locked in it's open position by clicking on the top arrow. 

2. Larger type face to increase readability. 

When you work with large amounts of data, the readability is extremely important. Our former typeface was generally a bit to small to be easily read in all conditions. So we have made it a bit larger.   
  
3. A more informative "head" for online reports.

Above each full search and watch report there is head with four blocks of information. These are: 

• Ordered search details
• Results meta data and access to file dates
• Risk analysis - See below. 
• Customized and created reports 

This way you get a quick and good overview of all relevant data concerning your report.

4. Risk analysis of trademark search results

We have always ranked our trademark search results statistically, from top to bottom, according to their risk level. But we have not explicitly shown the borders between different groups. Now we have added a "Risk level" to every result row, so you can easy and fast see the risk level.

Every mark has it's own risk level but we have decided to bundle them in four groups: 

• Risk level 1 - Very high risk
• Risk level 2 - High risk
• Risk level 3 - Medium risk
• Risk level 4 - Low risk 

This way you can easier see when a set of results is becoming less relevant. 
This Risk analysis will be presented in detail in a coming blog post. 

5. Downloaded reports get a Table of contents for easy navigation.
 
New PDF reports, and other formats, now have a clickable Table of contents. This way you can fast and accurately navigate in a large report. 

Please send me your personal feed-back to benoit@markify.com. 

We have now added Switzerland to our list of trademark databases, bringing the total up to 34 countries plus the 50 US states. See full list here.

Trademarks and company names

This means that you now can get a full, comprehensive search report for Switzerland, generated by the world's most powerful search algorithm (see benchmark study and below).

We have also added Swiss company names to this report and we have priced it at:

59 EUR, with five classes included.  

Top 3 German speaking countries

On demand from both Switzerland, Germany and Austria we decided to also put together a "German speaking" package. This package includes:

• Trademarks from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, OHIM/CTM and WIPO marks designating them. 
• Company names registered in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. These are put in a separate tab.  

And the price for all this is only 119 EUR. 

The world's best trademark search algorithm

If you haven't used Markify before, I will give you a few words about the Markify trademark algorithm, which is the core of our offer. Our algorithm, that took three years to build, have some distinct features:

• It is built statistically on more than 10.000 cases where two marks have been judged confusingly similar by a government official in Europe or in the US. 
• It minimizes the "noise" with more than 50%, when compared to other providers' full reports.
• The results are relevance ranked from top to bottom, saving you a lot of time. 

Like to test?

Please send me an email if you would like to test our products.

Meet us in Munich on the 23-24 of November

Once again we are exhibiting at the IP Service World 2015 in Munich. Last year we had some great discussions with German and Austrian attorneys at this event. We are now looking forward to seeing new and familiar faces there on the 23rd and 24th of November.

If you are in Munich, come by our booth and get the free trial. You will be surprised at the level of quality and the price you get from Markify products. 

We mainly do comprehensive searching (full availability reports) and monitoring of trademarks and domains names. 

We cover all 28 EU states, Norway, Turkey, US and Canada plus OHIM and WIPO. Regarding domains we cover all +1000 TLDs. 

A year ago we did what in the start-up community is called a “pivot”, a strategic change of course. In our case it boiled down to choosing one of our two client groups.

We decided to quit helping start-ups around the world with their trademark searching and trademark applications. Instead we wanted a complete focus on the trademark professionals, who from the start had understood and appreciated our full trademark search and watch reports.

These kind of decisions are never easy but for us it has been truly liberating. It has both let us focus our development of new products and how we communicate with our clients.

To better reflect our focus on the trademark professional, we are today launching a new design of our website. The changes are not huge and you will find most things at their usual place. But there are three changes in our offer you should be aware of:

Free trademark search moved

Thousands of people have every day used our free trademark search engine that also finds confusingly similar trademarks. But after discussions with both large and small trademark law firms and in-house counsels we have understood that this free search is not as important as our full availability reports and don’t really belong on the front.

As a consequence we decided to move it from the front page. You can still access it from the bottom navigation, Old free search. If you are not signed up, you will prompted to.

Only one similarity algorithm for Comprehensive Search Reports

We have earlier offered our search reports with two different similarity algorithms:

• the “Comprehensive 99%”, that finds all potential conflicts with the world’s most accurate trademark search algorithm, and
• the “Knockout plus”, that for half the price finds most (62%) of the potential conflicts with a minimum of report length.

The feedback has been that our “Comprehensive 99%” has such a low price, even for many markets, that there is no need for the knockout search product, at least not in this context.

So we have removed that option from the Comprehensive Search Report order.

Our “Knockout plus” algorithm is still in some cases a very efficient tool, so you will see it in a new search product very soon.

Whois info now included in new Domain watch price $39

The Domain watch, where you get a weekly report of new similar domain names, was earlier $29/year plus an optional $19/year for the whois info, a total of $48.

After discussing this with some of our larger clients we decided to include the whois data for all watched marks. The new price for Domain watch including whois info is from today $39.

Feedback appreciated

If you have any thoughts on this, please send me an email with your feedback: benoit at markify.com.

We have been an exhibitor at the INTA annual meeting for the past four years. There we meet attorneys from all over the world, with a majority of Americans. Now we decided to try to meet our European clients and potential clients in a trademark congress/exhibition.

So on the 24th and 25th of November we will be exhibiting at the IP Service World 2014 in Munich (Holiday Inn City Center).

If you are in Munich, come by our booth and you will get a free Comprehensive Search Report for all 28 EU states plus OHIM and WIPO. Our normal price for this is 449 EUR. If you cannot make it to Munich, send me an email and I will give you a free trial (benoit at markify.com).

We have now added the Canadian trademark database (CIPO) to our searching and monitoring services. We have made some adjustments to our system to handle that Canada not yet fully use the Nice classification system.

The price for a Comprehensive Search, or a Full Availability Search, as some providers call it, is set at USD 81 (or 59 EUR). For that you get our best-in-class similarity search algorithm that finds 99% of all confusingly similar trademarks – and with less "noise”. It is actually the best trademark similarity search in the world (see search report here).

Do you want to try one Comprehensive Search Report for free? Send me an email and I will send you the promotion code (benoit at markify.com).

We also offer our Knockout Plus Search for  Canada for only USD 40. This is “broad” knockout, finding both identical, phonetically identical and other very similar results. Approx. 60% of all potential conflicts but with only 10% of the list length. This is the professional choice for any name screening project or for an application on a tight budget.

To order, you just sign up here: http://www.markify.com/services/comprehensive-search.html

You find the watching service here and the yearly price is only USD 34. Every week you get one report per client. And you get the same strong similirity algorithm so you will not miss any potential conflicts. Combine it with US watch if you need.

Questions? Contact me at benoit at markify.com.

To the lucky few at the INTA Annual meeting 2014 in Hong Kong, starting this weekend: All attendees who leave a business card in our booth (number 725) will win one prize, and one attendee will win two:

1. One lucky winner will once again walk away with an iPad. We were the first firm to offer give away a free iPad, back in INTA San Francisco 2011. There are still few other rivalining products. Maybe next year in San Diego....

2. ALL others will win a FREE Comprehensive Trademark Search Report. You can choose between different reports,  covering up to 28 EU countries (value 450 EUR) or a US Full availability (USD129). See all choices here Come by, with questions and business cards, and you will ALL be rewarded!

“Listen to the customer” is a popular, and often a very good, advice when you develop your products and services. We didn’t just listen, we sat down with some of our best trademark attorney clients and discussed for hours.

“How can we at Markify help you serve your clients better?” was our main question.

The core answer, from both small and big firms, was rather simple:

“We like your searching and watching services. We love the accuracy of your trademark search algorithm. And the Markify pricing is amazing.

But, your services need to cover more trademark, domain name and common law databases.”

So the last year our team have been busy adding new databases to our comprehensive searching and monitoring services for trademarks and domain names.

Our geographical focus in this process has been the 28 EU countries, the US and the new gTLDs. We start here, but we will not stop here . . .

You find detailed descriptions, samples and pricing of our new offers here:

Comprehensive Search reports

Trademark monitoring

Domain name monitoring

We truly understand the value of your feedback. It is what helped build these services in the first place. So any more feedback is highly appreciated!

Markify is now adding domain names from all the new gTLDs, as they are being released, to our global  Domain Name Watch service. And the price remains the lowest in the industry: $29/year per watched brand.

If you are in the process of evaluating different domain name watch services (sometimes called Brand Monitor, Brand Alert or Domain Monitor), you should know that there two things that set Markify apart:

1. Similar results

We will not only give you identical matches of the brand, but also phonetically identical and phonetically similar results. To our knowledge, no one else does this.

So if you are Pepsi Co and want to be alerted when confusingly similar domain names are being registered, you will get reports with results like this from us:

• PEPPSI.com
• PEPSEE.camera
• BUYPEPSINOW.net
• PEHPSI.org
• PEBSI.guru
• PEPSI. de

2. Best price

We believe all brands should be able to afford  a domain name watch. And the cost for monitoring your brands at Markify is only $29/year per watched brand.

For this price we will watch your brand in the old (.com, .net, .org etc) and new gTLDs and in more than 200 ccTLDs (.de, .fr, .se, .jp etc).

This low price also means that you can easily monitor hundreds of brands. A lot of trademark attorneys put in their whole portfolio of trademarks into the Markify domain name watch system. Then they offer their clients to monitor the reports for a fee (maybe $200/year). And when there is an infringing domain name, they alert the client and may get new work. A win-win situation.

If you have found a better or cheaper domain name monitor service, please send me an email at benoit at markify.com. Thanks!

The winner of the new iPad was Lisel Ferguson from Procopio in San Diego. Her comment was:

"I am SO happy I won!"

All you who visited our booth during INTA 2013 in Dallas, and didn't win, will in the next few weeks get offers worth way more than an iPad ;-)

During the INTA (International Trademark Association) Annual Meeting in Dallas last week we choose once again to be an exhibitor. It was our third Annual Meeting after San Francisco 2011 and Washington DC 2012. These meetings gather more than 8000 trademark attorneys and domain name professionals. For a start-up it is always difficult to decide where to put your limited marketing dollars. But I must admit that I love these types of exhibitions or trade shows. There are four major reasons why we choose to invest in these events:

1. Market overview. You get a very good sense of what services are out there and you get a chance to talk to the different service providers.
    
2. Future sales. The contacts for future sales are very valuable. I would argue that the people coming in to your booth, probably are some of your most motivated, potential clients. I ended up with +400 business cards from people I believe can become some of my most important clients.
    
3. Product feedback. The detailed feedback you get and the possibility to develop your product together with the potential client.
    
4. Meeting competitors that may become future partners.

If you run a company and don't do trade shows, I would recommend you try one. If you are in the trademark or domain name business, I suggest we meet at the next INTA annual meeting, in Hong Kong 2014.

Markify is exhibiting at INTA 2013 meeting in Dallas. If you are in Dallas make sure you come by our booth to get some very interesting offers.

One of our offers is:

Global Domain Name Watch including all the new gTLDS coming later this year +200 of the older gTLDs and ccTLDs. All for $29/year per watched name.

This way you can offer all clients a monitoring service that finds not only identical but also similar domain names. And at a price much lower than the Trademark Clearing House.

Welcome!

Once again we have looked at all EU and USPTO trademark applications the last year - 2012 - and done a quick analysis of what words are used.

Raw lists of the popular 1000 trademark words can be found here: Top 1000 USPTO trademark words 2012, Top 1000 CTM trademark words 2012

The total number of different "words" are over 130.000. The distribution is as usual: 90 percent are used less than 5 times, like PINTEREST and JABRA, and the top 10 percent are used up to 2000 times, like ONE and LOVE.

Popular USPTO trademark words

What words were popular 2012 when it came to getting a US trademark registration?

A new word on the top list is CLOUD, wich was strong already in 2011 with 372 occurrences and this year made it to the top list when it showed up in 454 trademarks applications. Compare that with 2006, when CLOUD only showed up in 28 trademark applications.

Other trademark words moving up on the list are: WATER, FREE, STAR, BODY an NATIONAL.

Single letters are very popular in trademark filings, like T, N and E. A rising star here is the letter M, which appears in more than 700 trademark applications last year compared to 450 the year before.

Words moving down on the list are GREEN, REAL, USA and SOCIAL.

The top 100 USPTO trademark words 2012:

Note that we have eliminated the most common "stop words" like  THE, IS, AT, YOU, AND etc, and some company attributes like INC, LLC, COMPANY and GROUP.

Popular EU trademark words

We have also done a similar analysis of the very popular EU trademark registration called CTM (from OHIM). A CTM (Community Trade Mark) covers 27 countries and many languages. Surprisingly there is not a large  difference between the EU trademark list and the US trademarks. English is the dominating language, at least in the  in the pan-European trademark registration CTM.

A couple of trademark words you find in the CTM top list that you don't find in the USPTO top list: ECO, HOTEL, LONDON, QUALITY, ROYAL, EASY, EUROPEAN and PARIS.

Markify's trademark search engine just became a lot more global. We have added another 650.000 international trademarks to our trademark search engine.

All these trademarks come from the WIPO trademark database, sometimes called "ROMARIN". (WIPO is the United Nation's organization that administrates the Madrid system, through which you can get a trademark registration in approx. 80 countries.)

I think this means that Markify today is the world's only free trademark search engine that covers both the US (USPTO), EU (CTM/OHIM) and international (WIPO) trademarks.

A total of almost 4 million live trademarks, updated every 24 hours with 400.000 new marks per year.

We are also the only free trademark search that gives you a proper list of confusingly similar trademarks, where there could be a likelihood of confusion.

Some of the other providers try to do this with "fuzzy search". The problem with "fuzzy search" is that it is "fuzzy". It misses too much and gives you to much noise. A good similarity algorithm should not be "fuzzy" but very distinct, based on statistics.

We have based our algorithm on more that 10.000 actual cases where a government employee has said that these two trademarks are confusingly similar.

So now you can get the best trademark search results, including all classes, also for WIPO trademarks - for free.

Trademark attorneys should know that we have added the WIPO trademarks - without raising our price of $100 - in our premium products: US Comprehensive Trademark Search and EU Comprehensive Search.

Entrepreneurs and start-ups that uses our Trademark Registration should know that these Comprehensive Search reports are always included in our Trademark Registration service.

All our Trademark Watch and Monitor customers will now also be getting international WIPO results in their reports. At no additional cost.

After months of work the Markify trademark registration service is launched. When we set out to build the world's best trademark registration service we made the following list of criteria:

1. Easy and fast trademark application.
   • Start-ups and brand builders expect a web service to be easy and fast. Anything else is failure.
2. Help from experienced trademark attorneys.
   • Sure, you can do a trademark registration without the help of a trademark attorney. But in most cases it's a bad choice because of:
     • the time it takes,
     • the small money you save and
     • the risks involved.
   • We have put together a small network of independent trademark experts in the US and in Europe. Some of them run their own trademark law firm. Some work for big IP focused law firms. They all have in common that they are passionate about trademarks.
3. Focus on EU and US trademarks.
   • A CTM trademark registration from OHIM covers 27 EU countries in one application. With a government fee of only € 900 it is often the best deal for ambitious start-ups. CTM is also the fastest growing trademark registration in Europe.
   • A USPTO trademark registration protects your brand in the world's most important market, the US, and the government fee is only $325 per class.
4. Leverage the Markify comprehensive search technology.
   • Every Markify trademark registration gives you a Comprehensive Search that finds 99% of all confusingly similar brands (CTM, USPTO, Domains and Common law).
   • You also get a Comprehensive Trademark and Domain Name Watch that will help you protect your new brand.
   • These two services are included and only available through Markify.
5. Cheaper than any other trademark registration service.
   • Our attorneys could give us rock-bottom prices, since we are giving them a new client on a "silver platter". All client and trademark details are filled in and all fees are payed for.
   • The pricing goes from $199 (Core package) to $499 (Full package) + government fees for a USPTO trademark. And from € 299 (Core) to €499 (Full) + government fees for a CTM/OHIM trademark.
   • Another reason our pricing can be so low is that the Comprehensive Search is relevance ranked, which makes the job much easier and faster for the trademark attorney.

How do you think we can improve the trademark registration service? Send me an email at benoit followed by our domain name!

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

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:

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.

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.

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

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.

Last week there was an interesting seminar in Stockholm about the new top level domains (gTLDs) that will be open to application early 2012. Participating were representatives from all sides: registrars, registries, ICANN, trademark lawyers, brand owners and domainers.

I got to talk to some of them and here are my thoughts on how big brand and trademark owners will and should act. (We at Markify have no financial interest in the new gtlds.)

Three categories of gTLDs

First a bit of background:

From January 2012 anyone can buy their own tld, http://newgtlds.icann.org/ The fee for just buying the tld will be $185.000 plus $25.000/year. The cost for marketing your new tld will of course be much higher.

The three main categories that will apply for a new tld seems to be:

1. Geographies/Communities: .nyc, .moscow, .gay
2. Generic words: .bank, .poker, .shop
3. Brands: .facebook, .hitachi, .canon

Number 1. Geographies and number 2. Generic words will both try to sell domain names in one way or another.  But number 3. Brands is a very different category, with a very different agenda. What will they do and why?

The one big reason to buy a tld for a trademark owner

Why should a brand owner even consider buying a new gtld? The core sales pitch you can hear focus on two aspects:

• A short and attractive url – .SQUARE instead of SQUAREUP.COM
• New marketing possibilities – DRIVE.BMW instead of DRIVE.BMW.COM

I think most owners of big brands will think: “Why bother? I don’t need that. I already have the url I want and I’d rather spend that money on something else.”

True, but my guess is that they will reconsider and actually try to buy the new tld. Why? For one big reason:

You don’t want anyone else using your 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 it will be to buy the tld yourself.

What you should do: 3 cases

In short: If you can afford it - both the fee and the future marketing costs - you should buy your own tld. But for a couple of different reasons.

Case 1 - “Facebook”
You own the relevant .com and there are no other identical big brands competing for the new tld.

To-do: Buy the new tld primarily for defensive reasons. You don’t want anyone else to own it.

Case 2 - “Apple”
You own the relevant .com (like Apple Inc does) but there are other identical brands (like Apple Records) competing for the new tld.

To-do: Buy the new tld primarily for defensive reasons. You don’t want anyone else to own it and in the long term there might be advantages using it.

Case 3 - “SAS”
You don’t own the relevant .com, like Square, SAS (the airline), Next (many) etc. This group is highly motivated and they are the dream clients of the "helping-you-get-the-tld-you-deserve" industry.

To-do: Try to buy the new tld to get an attractive url. And be prepared to invest heavily in marketing your new domain.

The .com vs new gtlds

For the foreseeable future, 3-5 years, I believe the .com will continue to be the prime real-estate online. The new top level domains will form a new, second rate domain class, just below the .com domain.

Why? Because most big brands, that already have the .com, will not bother to invest huge amounts in teaching people a new url. Even if the url is shorter, it still is a change of address. And as long as the big brands stay on the .com with their main sites, it will continue to be the prime address.

The most basic reason to do a comprehensive trademark search is to avoid trouble.

When you start a new business or a new brand you want to be completely sure that you will not have to change that name later. Changing business name or brand 12 months or more after launch is often a disaster.

To stay out of trouble you have to avoid what the law calls likelihood of confusion. You can read on the USPTO's (The US Patent and Trademark Office) website: "A complete search is one that will uncover all similar marks, not just those that are identical." http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/search/

So you have to answer the question: Are there other similar trademarks, being used for similar or related goods or services?

To answer that question you should do a free comprehensive search at Markify.com (there are other trademark search engines but no one nearly as accurate that is also free, see report).

1. Choose you primary market: US or Europe.
2. Limit your search to 1-3 relevant classes (business categories)
3. Go through the result list and make sure that none of the marks is both:
   • Too similar and
   • Do similar things

Depending on your result list, this can be a bit tricky, learn more. It’s often worth a good nights sleep to get a professional opinion from a trademark attorney.

Wow! Markify is ranked number 1 in a study of trademark search services. In the report by ipPerformance you can read: "On average, most of the vendors had very similar results with the exception of Markify, where the results were significantly superior."

"Overall, we found that Markify provides the most impressive find rate. This result was significantly better (99.7%) than the other tools in the test."

You can download the full report at ipPerformance Group or directly right here.

This is of course a huge recognition of our work with the core similarity technology. Today we are proud and happy!

The Markify exposition at the INTA Annual Meeting in San Francisco in May was a huge success. And in several ways:

1. Business leads: We had so many visitors to our booth that the three of us didn't always have time to take care of everyone. The number of new potential clients is fantastic.
2. User input: The input from trademark lawyers from all over the world was simply outstanding. They told me all we need know when we now continue to develop Markify.
3. Partnerships: Industry leaders in various positions approached us to discuss cooperation. Very exciting opportunities.
4. Buzz: The buzz we generated in the trademark community is still echoing in our inboxes.

How did we do it? I think the trademark lawyer at one of the big cola drink companies summarized it well: "You had a great way of getting me into the booth (Win an iPad 2). Then you showed me a great product. Well done!"

We celebrate our first INTA Annual Meeting with giving away an iPad 2 to one lucky attendee. Enter the free trial of our new full watch services (no strings attached) and you may be the winner! Come by our booth 124 to get the promotion code. The winner will be announced on Tuesday the 17th at 3.15pm in our booth.

When we took the decision of exhibiting at the INTA Annual Meeting we understood it would mean a lot of extra work for us. The first time you do something it is always difficult and take a lot of time. Here are the six big areas I think are important for a successful exposition:

1. Set the overall target for our participation. Why are we exhibiting? With what offer? To who? Concept?
2. Produce the graphics and order all exposition gear.
3. Get the right personnel
4. Travel and hotel arrangements
5. Book the right meetings
6. Bring all gear to the booth, set it up, have fun and smile

Soon I will know what I have missed . . . Showtime

Some call a “No” the next best thing to a “Yes” when you are fundraising. Part cliché, part true, in my opinion. Because a “No” is only valuable if you understand it. Otherwise it can be a huge time waster. And getting a clear and fast “No” from angels and VC’s is not always that easy.

Before we got a firm “Yes” we got our share of “No’s”. Here is my personal guide to the land of “No” when you are raising seed capital.

I have found basically five kinds of “No’s” - and I have come to truly respect two of them
and found ways to deal with the others:

1. The “No” in advance. This kind of “No” you get on angels’ and VC’s websites, in interviews and other sources like Quora and Formspring. Here are some examples:

• “We never invest outside the US”
• “We only invest in B2C”
• “We have never invested in a company which hasn’t been referred to us by someone we trust.”

This is their strategy, and that must be their call. These people saved me a lot of time by stating their preferences. I respect that and will not bother them with my pitch if it doesn’t fit their criteria.

2. The silent “No”. At their website they encourage you to send your business plan. Then you  never hear from them. There is a fundamental communication problem here:

• The angel/VC thinks that he is sending the signal: “We are flooded by deals and actually don’t have time to answer all, even if we would like to”.
• But the entrepreneur might think that the signal is: “Your idea/team/plan is so bad that it is not even worth an answer”.

Waste of time for the entrepreneur and bad marketing for the angel/VC.

3. The clear and fast “No”. The angel/VC has looked at your start-up, maybe met you and quickly gives their reason for saying no. This will save you a lot of time and sometimes you get valuable input from their answer. Both parties build respect and network.

4. The slow “No”. It can sound like this: “This looks very interesting but we would like to see this, this, this and that.” When you are raising seed capital you just don’t have the time or resources to do too much else than focus on your core development. Unfortunately not all investors understand and respect this. To understand when you are wasting your time is key in this process.

5. The “Yes” that is really a “No”. It can sound like: “Yes, we are very interested, but not right now because we are so busy.Can you come back in two months?” Keep you hopes down when you start hearing the phrase “not right now”.

So here is an appell to all angels and VC’s, who I know really care for entrepreneurs and start-ups:
A. State selection criteria - On your website or wherever a search engine can find it, state your true first selection criteria,  typically: Location, Sectors, Referrals, Stages, or whatever selection model you are using. This will save you and the entrepreneur lots of time.
B. Deliver your “No” answers clear and fast - It will give you respect in the entrepreneur community and bring you valuable business in the long run.

Most advice when it comes to raising seed capital focuses on the pitch, the slides and the business plan. What to say and how to say it.

But fundraising is not only a pitch - it’s also a process.

"Secret" 1: Raising seed capital is a sales process.

Accept that raising capital is a sales process. You are selling yourself, the team, your idea, your vision, business concept and prototype. You are selling your stock in return for cash, network and advice. You are selling an option to future value. In short: You are selling.

If you approach it as a sales process - what are the consequences?

Sales is to an extent a numbers game. You should use the classic sales funnel when you are about to start raising seed capital: The more good "prospects" (potential investors) you put into the funnel, the more "sales" (investments) you get out in the other end.

1. The cold prospect list. This is the key to success. Without it your reach will be too limited and you won’t get to dance with the investor of your dream.
   • At the top you put your dream investors. Then you add another 20 angel or VC’s. Don’t write only their company names. You will have to identify the individual person and his or her email address.
   • Craft and send the pitch email to the first ten. In Europe most of the potential angels and VC’s will read your email even if you are not referred.
   • Don’t bother calling them before they have read your email.
2. Existing contacts. Your existing contacts are your best shots, but they are probably very limited in the angel and VC community. So make the most out of these contacts:
   • Walk through your list of contacts and ask yourself: “Who does he/she know in the angel/VC community?” (LinkedIn if possible)
   • Take meetings with your contacts even when you think the chance is small that they can help you.
3. Generate new contacts. Network as much as you can and as early as possible to gain more contacts.
   • Attend start-up contests, conferences, international and local events for entrepreneurs.
   • Ask every one you meet and talk to: “Who do you think I should talk to? Can you refer me?”
   • With this sales approach you add a quantity focus, which I believe is important at least in Europe where the VC and angel market is less mature than in the US.

If this is your first professional "sales tour", there are another two positive consequences of regarding  fundraising as a sales process:

• You demystify the topic. A lot of entrepreneurs get scared by the fundraising; they don’t think they understand it and they see it as a major obstacle. But selling is easier to relate to and feel confident about.
• You are about to get a crash course in high level sales. Fundraising takes a lot of time, so instead of “wasting” the time, look at it as some serious sales training.

Can a first time entrepreneur really give any advice regarding fundraising? Well, that’s just it: I believe raising money the first time is a very different experience than doing it a second time. The second time you have your own experience, you have a track record and you have more contacts. The first time you usually don’t have much. Since we just succeeded with our first round of financing, I thought I’d share some of my experiences.

There is so much good advice out there so instead of repeating what others have said much better, I will just point you to some very good sources:

Chris Dixon http://cdixon.org/contents/,
Fred Wilson http://www.avc.com/a_vc/archives.html
Steve Blank http://steveblank.com/.
Great link collection: http://tappen.posterous.com/nice-summary-stanleytang-256-must-read-conten#comment
And of course a lot of great answers on Quora.com

Why should you do a trademark registration?

A registered trademark is basically a cheap insurance against conflicts - trademark infringement. There are two types of conflicts you want to stay out of:

Conflict type 1 - Copycats steal your name.

• Without a trademark registration you will have a hard time fighting off the copycats. Having competition is diffcult enough, but when they start stealing your customers by using a similar name, you have a damaging sitiuation.
• Even if it is unusual, you can build a strong trademark without doing a registration. If you have built recognition for your brand name in a market, you have actually established a trademark without registering it. But the hard thing is proving it, and being prepared to do it in court. A registration will from day one give you proof that you were first.

Conflict type 2 - You are the copycat, most often without knowing it.

• You don’t want to get a letter from lawyer saying you will have to change name and pay for damages because you are too similar to an already registered trademark. Trademark search followed by a trademark registration is the best way to avoid this kind of trademark infringement.

For most businesses with any ambition, a trademark registration is a cheap way to stay out of conflicts. Put another way: You are securing the value you are creating in your business.

When can you skip a trademark registration?

You may save the trademark registration fee, if you agree to any of the following two statements:

A. It really doesn't matter that somebody starts using the same or a similar name.

• This is the often the case when you plan to use a very generic word or phrase as your business name/domain name - like Fund.com or CowboyHatsStore.com. The name is impossible to trademark and no one can claim that it is confusingly similar to their registered trademark.
• A good generic domain name can help in bringing in a lot of customers. But the risk that is often neglected here is that a competitor starts doing business with a very similar name/domain name, "stealing" or deceiving your customers. Examples:
• - Fund.com may loose some customers to Funds.com - Here both parties are probably well aware of the risks.
• - CowboyHatsStore.com will have to live close to CowboyHats.com in the web search results.
• - AutoRepair.com taking customers from AutoRepairs.com - This kind of situation can of course be very damaging.

B. It really doesn't matter that you might have to change your name in the future.

• Very few businesses would say that they are willing to take this risk. But the fact is that many businesses do, often without being aware of it. Sure, most of them are lucky and don’t end up in conflict. But many thousands of them get that letter that will force them to change name - which is a time and money consuming nightmare.

So, even if you’re going to skip a trademark registration, you should still do a trademark search and make sure there are no confusingly similar trademarks out there, in your markets, doing something similar.

Today Markify is launching the world’s first free search and watch for similar trademarks. Our vision is to make it easier for entrepreneurs and brand name creators to avoid conflict and protect their trademarks and domain names.

With Markify you can quickly and easily check any name to see if anybody is already operating under a similar trademark - both in the US (USPTO data) and in Europe (CTM data). So you can avoid them in your search for a new domain name or trademark. Avoid what the law calls "likelihood of confusion". Otherwise you might have to change your name later. A risk no business should take.

This first blog post cover the story on why and how we built this new kind of trademark search that is both fast, accurate and free.

The problem

Entrepreneurs and brand name creators know how hard it is to create a new, good name. The crowded domain name space has made it even more difficult. And when you have created a name and you think you can secure the domain name, there is still one big obstacle left:

Are there any similar trademarks out there, doing anything related to your business?

To answer that question you have to spend at least $500 on an availability search for similar trademarks, and that is for checking just one name, in one market. And it takes 48 hours to get the result, which is of course way to long in an intense name creating session.

So that was the problem: Trademark search has been slow, difficult and expensive.

The solution

After being involved in professional name processes for ten years I decided to try to change this.  I wanted to make trademark search easy, accurate, fast and free. So entrepreneurs and brand name creators  easily could check possible names for similar trademarks and domain name availability immediately.

I knew from the start that it was not going to be easy, that we would have to be a team with some very specific competencies.

As it happens, my father-in-law, Benny Brodda, is a professor emeritus in computational linguistics (Stockholm University), and he is a pioneer in the trademark search field. He built one of the first software programs for finding similar trademarks and sold his successful trademark search company in the 90’s. Benny has 30 years of experience and is of course a very valuable advisor.

The rest of us in the team are a mix of software engineers, linguists and trademark experts. We spend most of our time on two things: the algorithm work and creating a user experience that reduces the built in complexity.  And we all share a passion for business names - trademarks or domain names.

Together we have built a new trademark search that is easy, accurate, fast and free.

The core: Accurate name similarity

Every year there are many thousand examples of trademark applications that didn’t survive because they were too similar to a registered trademark. Here are some of them:

The entrepreneurs and brand name creators behind these and many thousand other applications didn’t just loose the registration fee. They all lost a lot of valuable time and some of them had to pull back a launch at great costs. Then they had to start a new name process - if they were still up to it . . .

But is it really that hard, to determine if two names are similar or not?

If you want to produce a very accurate search result, one that finds most potential “killers” (we call them that) without a lot of “noise”, then it is very hard. From the start we knew that if we were going to be useful to entrepreneurs, we couldn’t deliver search results with too much noise.

It took us in the team 1,5 year to build the core technology, the similarity algorithm. Endless hours spent on statistical tests and different tweaks. A long time but we think it paid off.

We think our search results are extremely accurate. We can today find the similar trademarks with much less noise than any other trademark search service we have seen. And we are constantly tuning and improving the similarity algorithm, so any feedback from you is very valuable to us.

Benoit Fallenius

Founder, CEO

Follow on twitter: benoitfallenius