Similar Trademark Searching Method Considering Similarity Between Vienna Classification and Figures

Abstract

To improve the efficiency of trademark examination, there is a demand for a system that searches trademarks with similar appearance. We have made such a system focusing on trademark shapes. However, appearance similarity is judged not only by similarity of graphical shapes, but also by conceptual elements of graphics. So, it is necessary to take them into account.

For this purpose, we focus on the Vienna classification. The matching of the Vienna classification indicates that trademarks share conceptual elements. One trademark can have several conceptual elements of Vienna classification, which are independent. Thus, it is possible to consider that similarity is higher if the number of shared conceptual elements is larger. By incorporating the number of shared conceptual elements into the above system, we have succeeded to improve the accuracy by 2%.