Launch of WIPO's Goods and Services Assistant

September 7, 2023

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is proud to announce the release of its Goods and Services Assistant, a tool designed to provide assistance to trademark applicants when selecting appropriate Goods and Services terms and their associated Nice classification in different languages during the filing process. This tool also provides support to trademark examiners in IP offices in their validation of trademark applications.

Goods and Services terms play a pivotal role in safeguarding trademarks, as they define the scope of protection for registered marks. If the term scope is, for example too broad, the trademark application could potentially be rejected on the ground that it conflicts with an existing confusingly similar registered trademark. Improper term selection also leads to delays and additional costs in cases where the term is not accepted by the national trademark office or wrongly classified.

The WIPO's Goods and Services Assistant is based on statistics computed from the largest trademark collections included in WIPO's Global Brand Database: the Goods and Services terms recommended by the tool have been accepted at least 30 times during the last 10 years by all covered trademark offices. The national collections covered at launch are: Australia, Canada, EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office), France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Madrid (WIPO), New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America

The user-friendly interface of the Goods and Services Assistant offers three types of searches:

1. Exact: Statistics are displayed for trademarks using the exact entered keyword as one of their goods and services terms.
2. String: the results list displays all the recommendable G&S terms in the system that contain the searched String; for example, if you enter “sushi”, the found terms will include “sushi rolling mats”, if you enter “solut”, the results will include “dispute resolution services”;
3. Semantic: the keyword entered will be used to return recommendable terms that are semantically similar, sorted by similarity decreasing. If you enter sushi, the result will include wasabi, seafood etc.. The semantic proximity will be indicated.

String and semantic searches enable the exploration of possible terms, while the exact search helps to assess the acceptability of a given term.

When using the string search, a simple query syntax is available to search alternate substrings (Boolean OR) and combined substrings (Boolean AND), as well as specifying word starts or word ends.

The results list includes the Nice classification information, as well as the number of times the Goods and Services was used. Clicking on the term will display a graphical view of the number of times the term was accepted by each office over the years.

Clicking on the “Search this in Global Database” button allows listing the details of the trademarks having used the currently selected goods and services terms in the past.

In addition, a translation function is available so that recommendable translations of terms can also be found.

Using this new tool to combine the discoverability of most appropriate terms with the assertion of their acceptability in multiple jurisdictions makes the Madrid route to file trademarks internationally even more efficient and cost effective. Join the free of charge webinar on September 19 or September 20 to learn how to use the tool.

This innovative tool is available free of charge to users on WIPO's website, accessible worldwide.