How do you find out if a name is a registered trademark?

Answer 1

Trademarks are of state or national significance, so you would need to look in each and every place where you want to determine if a mark is registered or not.

In many cases you can find an online database of all the registered trademarks in the areas you're interested in, say, the USA, European Community, Canada, etc. Some states offer online or telephone assistance for simple search requests.

For example, got to uspto.gov, click trademarks, search, and go from there.

You can usually search for trademarks by its words or description, or the name of its owner or the attorney of the owner. You should be aware that there are different state, federal and international classifications of trademarks; created as a way to segment the various industries (and to extract additional application fees).

Otherwise, you can hire a trademark attorney or a trademark search company to do the searching for you, and they will include any country you want, all U.S. states, and optionally search the internet and various trade journals for similar references.

The "million-dollar question" is "How similar does it have to be?"

For important rights you should hire a licensed and insured attorney to do your searching, so it is his or her responsibility to do it with adequate skill and to provide you with a detailed analysis of the results and any related risks or issues.