Top 100 trademark words 2012

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:


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

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.

The top 100 trademark words 2011

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.

Best tips to start-ups on trademark and new business 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

Trademark search that helps
entrepreneurs avoid conflict

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:

New application: Registered trademark:
MTOWN MOTOWN
NAVIXEN NAVIREL
DILIPS PHILIPS
FLEROX FLOREX
PEX-FLEX FLEXPEX
HABIXIN HALISYN
KAMEX CHAMEX
POWERED  BY PERVASIC PERVASIVE SOFTWARE

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

The new tool for trademark professionals