Searching U.S. Trademark Databases (cont'd)

In Lesson 4 we looked at trademarks that Kirkbi holds in the European trademark databases (EUROTMKS). From our earlier search in File 226 — TRADEMARKSCAN—U.S. Federal, it appears that the trademark for Legoland has changed hands several times.

For this search we'll check the State trademark database to see if it has been registered in any of the 50 states. Sometimes companies register a trademark only in a particular state, especially if they are doing business in only one state.

We'll BEGIN the search in File 246 — TRADEMARKSCAN—U.S. State to see if any trademarks for Legoland have been registered in one of the 50 states. We enter the following command in the command text box.

begin 246

Next, we search the Rotated Index using the prefix TR= as follows:

Tip 5-1

select tr=(lego? and land?)

Tip 5-2

This search will retrieve all trademarks for Legoland at the State level.

Well, it looks like none of the companies that owned the Legoland trademark have registered this mark at the State level. I'll send Ray an e-mail right away with these results.

Go to the next page.

5-2

Search Tip 5-1:

In the State, as well as in the Federal database, cross references have been added to assist in retrieval of corrupted spellings and unconventional presentations of whole words.

In addition, the special capability to search for a character string at the beginning, end, or middle of a word is also available.

Search Tip 5-2:

When searching the rotated index, always follow the trademark name with a question mark (?) to avoid zero (0) retrieval.

Example:

s tr=lego?

Use parentheses around the search terms to search both terms in the rotated index. Connect the search terms with the logical operator AND; do not use proximity connectors.

Example:

s tr=(lego? and land?)