I have some knowledge of this type of thing, not too indepth but here are the general things I know and can say factually:
if you’re in the US, your state has a Trademark office, as does the Federal (Patent and Trademark Office). State and Federal are separate filings, you can have the state but not the Federal if you want. You’ll need to do a search first, which is tedious and can be expensive. There is a P&TM depository library somewhere somewhat near you, nearly every major city has one–often either a college or public library. You can get instruction from the librarians there, but they cannot (and shouldn’t) do the work for you. If they give you an answer, and it turns out to be wrong, the library doesn’t want the liability, which is logical. You can either do the searching yourself, or you can have a lawyer do it and pay out the big $$. Even if you do it yourself, you’ll want a lawyer to double check.
Be prepared to take several days of searching to do this. It’s not necessarily easy to find, you literally have to go through lists and columns and books in all sorts of differing categories to be certain. The TM listing is a LOT less intensive than a Patent search, but you still will have a good chunk of time consumed.
And, getting the TM is not really cheap, but should be well worth it.
best of luck!
I’m not a lawyer, no legal advice is necessarily intended by this information. This is information learned from an ex-spouse who works at at PTM depository library, and this info may be a bit out of date as far as specifics. The best advice is worth what you pay for it, so see a lawyer FIRST before taking on the search.
