International Trademark Search: How to Check a Name Across Countries

Here's the international trademark search mistake I've watched founders make more than any other. They search one database, usually the USPTO or WIPO, see nothing that looks like their name, and decide the name is clear worldwide. Then they launch in a second country and find out someone there has owned it for years.

One example shows why. Registered marks whose text is exactly ORBIT number 347 records across the 15 offices Signa covers, held by roughly 180 different owner names (Signa data, queried 12 November 2026). Ask "is ORBIT taken?" and the honest answer is "where, and for what?" It's a different answer in every country and every class.

This guide gives you a four-step international trademark search: which free databases to use, in what order, what each one catches, what each one misses, and how to read what you find.

There Is No Global Trademark Register

Trademarks stop at the border

Trademarks are territorial. A registration in one country gives you rights in that country and nowhere else. Your US registration means nothing to an examiner in Brazil or a competitor in Japan.

The main exception is the EU trademark. One EU registration covers every EU member state as a single unit. It's still territorial, though. The territory is just bigger than one country.

One word, 15 offices, about 180 owners

Here is how the registered ORBIT marks split by office, counted as distinct owner names:

Two caveats. The counts are approximate, because one company can appear under several name variants, and co-owned records are counted under the first-listed owner. And the office figures add up to more than 180 because some owners hold ORBIT in several offices at once. The point holds either way: the same word belongs to dozens of different businesses, split by country and by the goods they sell.

What "international trademark search" really means

An international trademark search checks whether your name is already registered, or in use, in each country where you plan to sell. No single international trademark database answers that, so in practice a global trademark search is a sequence of searches, each one covering a gap the last one left open:

The rest of this guide walks through that sequence in order.

Before You Search: Pick Your Countries and Classes

A little prep keeps every later search focused. Write down three things:

1. Your countries. List where you sell now, where you expect to sell in the next 2-3 years, and where you manufacture. Manufacturing countries are the ones founders forget.
2. Your classes. The Nice Classification is the international system for sorting goods and services into 45 classes: 1-34 for goods, 35-45 for services. Nearly every office uses it, so class is the one filter that works the same everywhere. Pick your classes once and reuse them in every database. Watch for neighbors, though: similar goods can sit in different classes. The Nice classification reference covers which classes tend to overlap.
3. Your name in other scripts. For markets that use Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic or Cyrillic script, note how your name would be translated or transliterated. You'll need those versions in Step 3.

Do this before your first filing, not after. Under the Paris Convention, once you file in one member country you have 6 months to file in others and claim your first filing date as theirs. That priority window is your chance to change course cheaply. If you search abroad only after filing at home, you may find the conflict when the 6 months are already gone.

Step 1: Search the WIPO Global Brand Database

The Madrid System lets you file one international application through your home office and designate several member countries at once. It has 117 members covering 133 countries (WIPO, checked 12 November 2026); the count of countries is higher because some members, like the EU, are regional. Saudi Arabia is the newest member. If Madrid is new to you, start with how the Madrid Protocol works.

Start wide. The WIPO Global Brand Database is free and needs no account. It combines international registrations from the Madrid System with dozens of national and regional collections. The list of collections changes, so check it inside the database to see which countries you're actually searching.

Two filters do most of the work here: designated country (where the owner asked for protection) and country of origin (where the owner is based). Filter by the countries on your list and your Nice classes. The WIPO trademark search guide walks through the filters screen by screen.

A first pass usually takes three searches:

1. Your exact name, no filters, to see how crowded the word is worldwide.
2. Your name plus close spellings, filtered to your countries and classes. Drop a letter, double a letter, swap a vowel.
3. The distinctive part alone, if your name has two words. Examiners usually focus on the most distinctive word, so that's where conflicts tend to sit.

One limitation trips people up. An international registration is a bundle of national rights, not one global right. Each designated office examines the mark under its own law and can refuse it.

A WIPO record that lists Japan as a designated country doesn't tell you Japan granted protection. Open the record and read the status for each country.

For Saudi Arabia, WIPO shows international registrations designating it, but marks filed nationally sit in the Saudi office's (SAIP) own register.

Step 2: Search TMview

Next, TMview, the free search tool run by the EUIPO. It covers 143,842,303 trademarks from 81 participating offices (TMview, 4 November 2026). That includes the big registers outside the EU: the US, China, Japan, Korea, Brazil, the UK, Australia and Canada. China alone is about 42% of the records, which makes TMview a quick free way to get a first look at Asian registers.

What TMview misses

A clean TMview result is a good sign, not clearance. Four gaps to know:

• No sound-alike search. TMview has no phonetic matching, so a mark that sounds like yours but is spelled differently can slip through. Search spelling variants by hand.
• Stale offices. Several offices, including India, Malaysia and the Philippines, were last updated in early May 2026. One office hasn't sent data since February 2022.
• Missing registers. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and the UAE aren't covered at all.
• Machine-translated goods. Goods and services descriptions are translated using Harmonised Database terms first, then DeepL or Google. Fine for a first read, not for deciding whether your goods overlap with someone else's.

Before you trust a clean result for a country, check that office's last update date. The TMview search guide shows where to find it, plus how territories pull EU and international marks into your results.

Step 3: Search Each Target Country's Own Register

Aggregators are where you look first. When you search a trademark in other countries, the national register is where you look last for each one, because it's the source of truth. It's the freshest copy of the data, it uses the office's own status labels, and it holds marks in local script that an aggregator may show badly or not at all.

For two countries on that list, this step isn't optional. Singapore isn't in TMview at all, and India's TMview data was last refreshed in early May 2026. For both, the national register is the freshest free source.

Search the local-script versions of your name here too. A Latin-letter search of a Chinese, Japanese or Korean register won't find a mark registered in characters.

Step 4: Search Beyond the Registers

Registers only show what's been filed. Whether that's enough depends on the country's legal system.

Common-law countries: use creates rights

In the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, a business can build trademark rights just by using a name, without ever registering it. Those rights won't show up in any database in Steps 1 to 3. So for these countries, also search:

• Google and other search engines, in each country's version
• Marketplaces such as Amazon, plus local equivalents
• App stores
• Company registers (Companies House in the UK, for example)
• Domain names and social handles

First-to-file countries: the register is most of the story

Most jurisdictions award rights to whoever files first, including China, the EU and most of Latin America. There, the register is close to the whole picture, and a clean register search means more.

The flip side is trademark squatting. In strict first-to-file countries, a third party can register your brand before you arrive and then block you or ask you to buy it back. China is the example most often cited. If you plan to sell or manufacture in a first-to-file country, the longer your name is public there and unfiled, the more exposed it is.

How to Read Results Across Countries

Same mark, different owner in every country

Go back to ORBIT. A US owner of ORBIT in one class says nothing about who owns ORBIT in Brazil, or in the same class next door. Judge every hit by three questions: which country, which class, and what status. A conflict in one country is a problem in that country, and possibly only there.

Pending marks may still be opposable

An opposition is a formal challenge a third party files to stop a trademark from registering. If your search turns up a pending mark that conflicts with yours, there may still be time to oppose it. How much time depends on the country (Signa data, queried 12 November 2026; rules last verified September 2026):

Note the last row. Switzerland and Norway use post-registration opposition: the mark registers first, and the window opens after. So in those two countries, a mark that already shows as registered may still be opposable for 3 months. Elsewhere, a 30-day US window and a 3-month EU window are very different deadlines if you spot a conflict late.

A simple risk scale

Trademark conflict isn't binary. In each country, sort what you find the same way:

• High risk: Same or very similar mark, same or closely related Nice class, registered, owner active. Many founders rename at this point; at minimum, get a trademark attorney's view.
• Medium risk: Similar (not identical) mark, related class, registered. Worth a conversation with a trademark attorney.
• Lower risk: Somewhat similar mark, unrelated class, or the mark is expired or cancelled. Often workable, but write down your reasoning.

Keep one log for every country

By Step 4 you'll have searched at least four sources per country. Without notes, the results blur together within a day. Keep a simple log with one row per hit:

• Country and database searched
• Date of the search (and the database's last update date, if shown)
• The conflicting mark, its class and its status
• Your risk rating and why

The log does two jobs. It shows you which countries are clean, crowded or blocked, so you can decide where to file first. And it gives your attorney a head start, which can mean a shorter, cheaper review.

No search result is a guarantee in any country. For how to document a clearance properly, see the trademark clearance search guide.

5 Common Mistakes in International Trademark Searches

1. Treating one database as global clearance

Neither WIPO's database nor TMview covers every office, and they don't cover the same ones. A clean result in either one is a clean result for the collections it searched, nothing more.

2. Searching only the exact Latin spelling

Say your brand is LUMORA. In China, Japan or Korea, a competitor might register a transliteration in local characters, or a translation of what the name means. Neither shows up in a Latin-letter search, and TMview won't catch sound-alikes either. Search translations and local-script versions, ideally with help from local counsel who reads the script.

3. Searching after you file

The 6-month Paris priority window is the cheapest moment to fix a name problem abroad. Search before your first filing so a conflict in a target country can change your plan while your priority date still protects you.

4. Assuming a Madrid designation equals protection

Designating a country is asking for protection, not getting it. Each office can refuse. When you read someone else's international registration, check the per-country status. When you plan your own, weigh it against national filings; Madrid Protocol vs direct filing compares the two.

5. Ignoring data dates

Every database is a snapshot. In TMview, some offices are months behind and one is years behind. A mark filed last month may not be in the copy you searched. Check update dates, and confirm anything important on the national register.

Tools to Check a Trademark in Multiple Countries at Once

Your options fall into three groups:

• Free aggregators. The WIPO Global Brand Database and TMview are the closest thing to a free worldwide trademark search. They're broad and cost nothing, with the gaps covered above.
• Paid full-service search firms. They search many registers plus common-law sources and deliver a written report. The trademark search services comparison breaks down the options.
• APIs. For teams that need to run international trademark searches repeatedly, inside a product or a naming workflow, an API returns results from many offices in one request. Signa searches 15 live offices: the US, EUIPO, WIPO, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Singapore, about 64.7 million records in total. Most offices sync daily; Brazil, Canada, France and WIPO sync weekly. Each result labels how it was matched, including phonetic and lookalike matches. Signa doesn't cover China, Japan, Korea or India, so for those you still need TMview and the national registers.

Your International Trademark Search Checklist

1. List your countries and classes, including where you manufacture.
2. Search the WIPO Global Brand Database, filtered by designated country and class. Read per-country status.
3. Search TMview, checking each office's last update date and searching spelling variants by hand.
4. Search each target country's national register, including local-script and translated versions of your name.
5. Search the web, marketplaces and company registers, especially in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.
6. Take your shortlist to a trademark attorney before your first filing, so you keep the 6-month priority window to adjust.

Once your name survives the search, the next question is where and how to file. The global trademark filing strategy guide covers sequencing and budgets.

For multi-office search in one request, explore Signa's trademark search.

This guide is educational and not legal advice. Consult a trademark attorney for legal guidance specific to your situation.