The European Union Intellectual Property Office (the office formerly known as OHIM) has released a fascinating new image searching system for trademarks. You can upload an image and the system will look for similar images, based upon some sort of AI (artificial intelligence) algorithm. I decided to try it out. I uploaded the familiar image that you see at right. Here is a small portion of what the system found:
The system found these images and many more. (Click on the image to make it bigger.) By the way, who wants to win a prize? The first person to post a comment naming the man in this image will win a nice pocket-sized digital voltmeter.
I am pretty sure that I would never have been able to find any of these images using the traditional design codes in the trademark database.
Emboldened by this result from the search system, I tried again. I uploaded the familiar Firefox icon. The search system somehow worked out that the creature in the icon was a fox, and found another icon that was a circle with a head of a fox.
Again I am quite sure I would never have found this icon myself using the old-fashioned design search codes of the database.
I learned about this development at the EUIPO from a posting in the E-Trademarks listserv by alert list member Alex Samuel.
To try out the system, click here.
Alex notes an entertaining TechCrunch article about the search system.
I believe those tms are all variations on Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Yes we have a winner! Valarie’s pocket-sized digital voltmeter will go out in today’s mail.
The man depicted in the drawing is probably Leonardo, but the consensus is that there is no way to tell for sure.
Vitruvian Man (c 1485) by Leonardo da Vinci
Carl, did you find anyway to narrow the search results by class? I played around with the “advanced search” but could not get it to combine a design search with the advanced search features.