TradeMark Express Blog: All Things Trademark

What's in a Comprehensive Common-Law Search?

As part of a comprehensive name research, Common-Law sources should be checked. What makes a Common-Law search comprehensive?

Here is a listing of SOME of the databases TradeMark Express checks in conducting a Common-Law search:

* Over 16 million trade names are searched - yellow pages, corporations, DBA fictitious name filings, company directories, newspapers, trade journals, court records, tax records, municipal records, credit records, product databases, industry sources, etc.

* Dun & Bradstreet -- Dun's Market Indicators consist of over 11 million Dun & Bradstreet Enhanced DMI records, plus over 16 million US records from D&B's vast data warehouse. With over 98% of the records being private companies, DMI is widely recognized as the premier source for hard to find, basic company information.

* Company and product information databases--including American Business Information, US Business Directory Company Intelligence, Database America All Business File and dozens of other company and product directories.

* Public Records--DBA - Doing Business As, or fictitious business names, filings for 47 states; corporation filings for 49 states. Prompt, MARS and other Full text News Sources--Hundreds of major newspapers, newsletters, business and industry-specific journals, periodicals, abstracts and reviews.

* Industry-Specific Sources--Specialized databases are researched for names in the following industries: entertainment, communications, computers, publishing, medicine, pharmaceuticals, electronics, technology and sports.

To see a complete listing, check out the PDF document here.

A search of the internet and domain names should also be conducted. TradeMark Express recommends that every client take advantage of the FREE resources out there to conduct this part of the search. In conducting our Common-Law search, we feel it important to spend our time and money on researching databases not freely available to the public.

Recommended sites:

Google
Yahoo
NameBoy
WHOIS