The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered image search technology that makes it faster and easier to establish the distinctiveness of a trademark in a target market.
Earlier-generation image search tools primarily determine trademark image similarity by identifying shapes and colors in marks. WIPO’s new AI-based technology improves on this technology by using deep machine learning to identify combinations of concepts – such as an apple, an eagle, a tree, a crown, a car, a star – within an image to find similar marks that have previously been registered.
The new technology results in a narrower and more precise group of potentially similar marks, facilitating greater certainty in strategic planning for brand expansion into new markets. With fewer results to scrutinize, this also translates into labor-cost savings for trademark examiners, attorneys and paralegals, industry practitioners and researchers.
WIPO’s new AI search technology leverages deep neural networks and figurative elements classification data from the Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks and from large trademark offices.
All users can access the AI search technology for free through WIPO’s Global Brand Database, where it has been fully integrated into the database search engine.
[Press Release dt. 26-03-2019]
[Source: WIPO]