Too often, businesses invest heavily in a brand name — developing visual identity, building marketing collateral, securing domains — only to discover that someone else already holds rights to the same or a confusingly similar mark. At that point, the options are unattractive: rebrand at significant cost, negotiate a coexistence arrangement from a weak position, or proceed and accept the legal risk.
A trademark clearance search identifies these conflicts before they become problems. It tells you whether your proposed mark is likely to be registered successfully, flags earlier marks that could block you, and surfaces risks across your target markets. The cost of a clearance search is a fraction of what a rebrand costs. More importantly, it gives you the confidence to invest in your brand knowing the legal foundation is solid.
For branding agencies, clearance is equally critical. Presenting a name to a client that turns out to be unavailable undermines trust and wastes creative effort. Integrating clearance into the naming process — rather than treating it as a legal afterthought — leads to stronger outcomes for everyone involved.
Our clearance process follows a structured pipeline with built-in checkpoints. Every stage produces outputs that are reviewed, annotated, and validated before the next stage begins. This means you never receive a raw data dump — you receive considered legal analysis at every step.
Every clearance project starts with understanding what you need to protect. We capture the candidate mark — whether it is a word mark, a figurative mark such as a logo, or a combination of both — the goods and services you intend to cover, and the jurisdictions where you need protection.
For goods and services classification, we work with you to translate your business activities into the formal Nice Classification system that trademark offices use worldwide. Our AI-assisted classification tool helps map plain-language descriptions of your products and services to the correct Nice classes, but the final classification is always reviewed and confirmed by our attorneys.
This scoping stage is also where we agree on the depth of analysis. Not every decision requires the same level of scrutiny — a startup exploring five candidate names needs a different approach than a company about to file a single name across multiple continents. We offer three clearance modes ranging from a focused assessment of the mark itself through to a comprehensive multi-jurisdictional analysis, and we help you choose the right one based on where you are in the decision-making process.
Once the scope is defined, we search the relevant trademark databases for potentially conflicting marks. Our searches run through IPRHQ, our proprietary IP lifecycle platform, which gives us access to over 55 million trademark records across major jurisdictions worldwide.
The search is not limited to identical marks. We cast a wide net to capture phonetic variants, visual similarities, and conceptual equivalents that a trademark examiner or opponent might consider confusingly similar. The goal is to surface every mark that could reasonably pose a risk — not just the obvious ones.
Search results are processed and structured automatically, but they are not sent to you as-is. They feed into the analysis stages that follow.
Before looking at what others have registered, we first examine whether your proposed mark is inherently registrable. This is the absolute grounds analysis — an assessment of the mark on its own merits.
We analyse the candidate across all relevant languages, looking at whether the mark could be considered descriptive, whether it is distinctive enough to function as a trademark, whether it could mislead consumers, and whether it raises any other grounds for refusal. This linguistic breadth matters: a mark that works perfectly in English may be descriptive or offensive in another language, and trademark offices in multilingual jurisdictions will assess it accordingly.
Our analysis uses AI to perform the initial multilingual screening, but the assessment is reviewed and annotated by our attorneys before it is finalised. The AI broadens our reach across languages; the legal judgment stays human.
Once the absolute grounds analysis is complete, you receive a checkpoint report. We walk you through the findings, discuss any concerns, and — if the mark passes — move to the next stage.
This is where we assess your candidate mark against every potentially conflicting mark surfaced in the search. For each prior mark, we evaluate the risk across four dimensions.
Phonetic similarity examines how the marks sound when spoken. Two marks that look different on paper may sound alike in practice, and that phonetic overlap can be enough to create a likelihood of confusion.
Visual similarity compares how the marks look. For word marks, this includes letter composition, length, and structure. For figurative marks, we use image analysis to compare visual elements and overall impression.
Conceptual similarity assesses whether the marks convey related meanings or associations. Two marks with different words and different sounds can still conflict if they evoke the same idea in the consumer's mind.
Goods and services overlap determines whether the prior mark covers products or services that are identical or similar to yours. A conflicting mark in an unrelated field may pose little risk; the same mark in your exact market segment is a serious concern.
Each prior mark receives a structured threat assessment combining these four dimensions, weighted by the strength of the earlier right and the degree of market overlap. Our technology layer provides quantitative scoring across all four dimensions, while our attorneys layer in the qualitative legal reasoning — jurisdiction-specific case law, the reputation of the prior mark, any history of enforcement — that turns data into actionable advice.
This combination matters. Quantitative scoring catches conflicts that a manual review might miss when dealing with hundreds of search results. Legal judgment filters out the noise — a high similarity score does not automatically mean a high risk if the goods and services are distant or the earlier mark is weak.
The final stage brings everything together into a clear recommendation. We synthesise the absolute and relative grounds findings into an overall risk assessment for each candidate mark, with a practical recommendation: proceed to filing, proceed with caveats, or reconsider.
Where risks exist, we explain exactly what they are, how serious they are, and what your options are. Sometimes the right answer is to file and accept a manageable level of risk. Sometimes it is to adjust the goods and services specification to reduce overlap. Sometimes a different mark is the better commercial decision. We give you the information to make that call — we do not make it for you.
For branding agencies managing multiple candidates, this stage provides the structured comparison you need to advise your client. Each candidate is assessed on the same dimensions, making it straightforward to compare risk profiles and make an informed recommendation.
When you decide to proceed, the transition from clearance to filing is seamless. The intelligence gathered during clearance — the jurisdictions analysed, the goods and services classification, the identified risks — feeds directly into the filing process. There is no need to re-brief us, re-classify your goods, or start from scratch.
We prepare cost estimates for your chosen filing strategy, covering official fees, professional fees, and disbursements across each jurisdiction. If you are filing an EU trademark, we can handle the application directly through our integration with the EUIPO e-filing system, including fast-track processing where eligible.
The clearance findings also inform your post-filing monitoring strategy. Marks that were identified as potential conflicts during clearance become the baseline for ongoing watching — so you know immediately if a new filing surfaces that could affect your position.
We work regularly with branding agencies as part of the naming process, and we have designed our workflow to fit naturally alongside creative development. We can run quick assessments on long lists of candidates early in the creative process, conduct deeper analysis on a shortlist as it narrows, and provide the detailed clearance that gives the final candidate its legal foundation.
Our reporting is structured for both legal and non-legal audiences. Agency teams and their clients receive clear, jargon-light summaries alongside the detailed legal analysis — so everyone involved in the naming decision has the information they need at the level of detail that is useful to them.
Three things distinguish how we handle clearance.
First, our technology infrastructure. IPRHQ gives us direct access to over 55 million trademark records. Our AI-assisted analysis covers all relevant languages and scoring dimensions. Our machine learning models provide quantitative similarity assessments that complement the qualitative legal analysis. This technology does not replace attorney judgment — it extends what our attorneys can see, how many results they can evaluate, and how consistently they can assess risk.
Second, our structured process. The checkpoint system means every stage is reviewed and validated before the next begins. You are never presented with unreviewed AI output. Every finding is considered, annotated, and confirmed by an attorney before it reaches you.
Third, the continuity from clearance through to filing and beyond. Because clearance, filing, cost estimation, and monitoring all live within the same platform, nothing is lost in translation between stages. The intelligence you pay for during clearance continues to work for you long after the search is complete.
Pitch is the law firm for innovators and creatives. If you are developing a new brand and want to understand your trademark clearance options, get in touch or schedule a meeting with our team.
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