For a trademark to be registered, it must be unique and must not violate other legal requirements. By using a pre-check, you can evaluate this in advance and save the brand time and money.
If the mark does not pass the examination, Rospatent does not return the money paid as a fee: 10,500 rubles if the application was submitted electronically, and 15,000 rubles if the application was submitted in person on paper or sent by mail.
The maximum duration of examination of a trademark at Rospatent is 18.5 months. Therefore, if you do not check the sign before the registration procedure, the business risks losing more than a year of its work.
If a preliminary check shows that the mark is “unpassable” – for example, another business has already registered it – you can modify it so that it has a chance to pass the examination of Rospatent.
If the risk of refusal is small, you can prepare arguments in order to defend the mark before Rospatent if something happens.
Here are the three stages of trademark pre-screening:
- Check the uniqueness – whether the trademark belongs to other companies or entrepreneurs, and whether it is among the already submitted applications for registration.
- Make sure that the trademark does not violate other legal requirements.
- Check the search results for the trademark on the Internet.
- In the following sections we will analyze each point in detail.
