A trademark is a sign used to indicate and distinguish the origin of goods or services, and can be words or graphics, etc. Before filing for a trademark registration, applicants must first check whether the trademark is identical or similar to a trademark that has already been registered or filed by another person. To apply for a trademark registration in Taiwan, the applicant can use the Trademark Search System provided by the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) for conducting a trademark search. If there is no identical or similar trademark designating the same or similar in the official trademark database, the applicant may then decide to file a trademark application with TIPO, thereby reducing the risk of being rejected.
With the advance of science and technology, as well as the rapid development of the internet, artificial intelligence (abbreviated as AI) technology has gradually been utilized in many fields including intellectual property rights. Since examiners often need to conduct previous case searches when examining patent or trademark applications, AI can quickly analyze a large amount of data and save manual processing time. In recent years, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), and the Singapore Intellectual Property Office (IPOS), have successively established AI trademark search systems. To keep pace with international standards, TIPO began about three years ago the development of using AI tool for trademark searches, and successfully introduced the AI function of “Search by Image” to the public use on March 25, 2024. This is an important milestone as the AI technology of TIPO trademark search system is mainly self-developed. According to TIPO, the new AI-powered search function to retrieve image trademarks was being repeatedly tested, then put to trials and evaluations by the examiners. The new feature is confirmed to achieve a very high rate of detecting/finding identical and highly similar trademarks in previous cases.
The so-called “Search by Image” implies that the users (trademark applicants or anyone) only need to upload trademark images without entering any parameters or search requirements. It uses AI to quickly filter and obtain the search results from Class 1 to Class 45 for similar trademarks. The search results could help the applicant evaluate whether to file the trademark registration. The applicant can also attach the search results when filing the trademark registration for Examiner’s reference to shorten the examination time. TIPO’s AI trademark search can be accessed from the current trademark search system, or by a direct click on the following link:
https://cloud.tipo.gov.tw/S282/S282WV1
The format of trademark image must be PNG, JPG, BMP, or JPEG, with a file size limited to 5 MB. It is recommended that the trademark specimen be cropped to a square size of 242px * 242px or above. The AI search results will be ranked by the degree of image similarity and provide up to 1,000 trademarks registered or filed. However, the new feature is still in the testing phase of beta version and serves as a graphical-assisted search tool. Therefore, TIPO advises that, prior to the launch of the official version of AI image trademark search, the search results of the current search system by setting the graphic path, goods or services (or similar groups) based on the “Graphic Similarity Search” shall prevail. Given that TIPO has put the AI image trademark search to public use, users can give feedback to optimize the system and enhance its effectiveness.
In summary, the use of AI ’s image search function for trademarks is aimed to improve the efficiency and convenience of trademark registration. Nevertheless, trademark search is very important for new trademark registration applications, but trademark search results can sometimes not be correctly interpretable by ordinary applicants. Moreover, despite the similarity issues of trademarks, a new application of trademark registration is required to possess distinctiveness and satisfy other requirements, not to mention that in making interpretation of similarity, it involves subjective viewpoints with past practices adopted by TIPO. As such, the applicant needs the assistance of a professional agent to determine whether the trademark application would meet the requirements for registration.s requesting accelerated examination are stricter than those under the normal examination procedure.
