If you are looking for trademark infringement only on the USPTO website and such, there is a very high chance that you are missing a large portion of what actually exists.  This is because many others who attempt to infringe on your trademark will never file with the USPTO and thus there would be no records.  In order to expand your view of trademarks that are actually in use in commerce you should also examine trademarks in use in cyberspace.

In short, monitoring of your trademarks should include regular checks of the major search engines to make sure others, and in particular your competition, have not adopted or are using trademarks similar to yours.  There are far too many search engines out there to mention and repeatedly search them all.  However, for the purposes of this article we suggest routine searches of the three biggest in the U.S.: Google (@45% of search traffic in the U.S.); Yahoo! (@21%); and Bing (@12%).

Searching for your trademark using these three search engines may identify others wrongful use of trademarks identical or substantially similar to yours.  It is also important to note that monitoring of these search engines should not simply be limited to whether someone else has adopted use of a mark which is identical or similar to yours.

Standard US TM Search includes US Federal and State search. Comprehensive US TM Search also includes US Common Law databases and Internet Domain Names. Comprehensive US and International TM Search also includes searches in Canada, Europe, United Kingdom, Germany and WIPO. Customized searches are also available to assist clients with a legal analysis for brand availability or expansion, company names, foreign trademarks or common law.

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