Until now the only trade mark data available to the public from the USPTO web site has related to federally registered and pending trade marks – of which there are nearly two million dating back to 1885 – and status information.
The new system, known as Trademark Document Retrieval (TDR), extends the scope of information available on-line to the documents in over 460,000 official trade mark applications files.
As new applications are filed, says the USPTO, they will be added to the database. Over the next five years the remaining paper files of around 1.2 million active trade mark registrations will be converted into digital format for TDR access.
"Trade marks help consumers distinguish among products and services and are often an organisation's most valuable asset," said Jon Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO. "The TDR system improves our ability to provide timely and useful information to business owners as they develop their marks and prepare to file trade mark applications."