When you start planning a new brand, product or company it is essential to make sure you have a unique name or mark so you can effectively market your product; this means you will have to do a trademark search. From a legal perspective, you should also be aware of trademark laws. If you choose a mark that someone else is already using, you risk being sued for trademark US infringement. Also be careful to select a mark that is not confusingly similar to an existing mark, because this also can be grounds for trademark infringement.

So where do you start with a trademark search? You might think that you should immediately go online and search for registered trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). This would give you information about which trademarks have been registered or information on pending applications for trademarks. However, what makes a trademark search challenging is the fact that rights to a mark can be established by legitimate use of the mark – meaning that a valid trademark US might not be registered with the USPTO.

Even though it is extremely important to check for registered trademarks, the first step is to do some online research. You can use a search engine, such as Google or Bing, and try to find companies with a similar name to the one you have in mind. If someone else is using that mark, you should definitely consider picking a different one.

One other important aspect when doing a trademark search online is to try to find companies or products which are similar to your intended mark. For instance, check for your mark in the plural, with the words rearranged etc. If you find a similar mark, but not exactly the same, you may still be safe if the product is completely different from yours, or if there is no way they could be confused. Still, be cautious. If there is a mark that could be confused with yours, give it serious consideration before you invest in product marketing or branding efforts.

The next step, after you’ve done a thorough trademark search online and you think no one else is using your mark, you should search through existing trademarks and trademarks applications. This step is really easy; all you have to do is to go to the USPTO’s Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS).

When you perform a trademark search via TESS, follow the same guidelines as with your online search: check to see if the exact mark has been registered, and look for variations on the mark. Be thorough and try searching in different ways. Since finding nothing is the goal – you can’t do enough searching to ensure that your mark is unique.

If you think that this is too much of a hassle for you, keep in mind that a trademark search can also be performed by trademark US searching companies or by individual trademark US attorneys. One thing to take into consideration is that a trademark search is never "perfect" since it relies on databases which by the very nature of trademark law can never be fully up-to-date or broad enough. Nonetheless, a trademark search is common and necessary, since experience has shown that in large majority of cases it successfully predicts which marks are available and which are not.

If you’re interested in starting a business you first need to do a trademark search http://www.trademarkdirect.com. You can get help from specialized trademark US http://www.trademarkdirect.com searching company which will help you achieve your goal.