Seattle Trademark Lawyer

The Washington Secretary of State’s database of trademark filings is now searchable (accessible here, at the bottom of the page).

This is a big improvement. Before, searching state records was a hit-and-miss (and mostly miss) affair with the Washington State Digital Archives. Or it meant spending time on the phone. Or paying to access third-party databases, which was a bit galling, since trademark filings are public.

Be galled no more. Users can now search Washington trademark filings by trademark number, owner name, trademark word elements, or Uniform Business Identifier (UBI) number. Once a filing is found, you can click a hyperlink and see PDFs of the as-filed documents. The interface is publicly-available, and it’s free.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. Those are the only searches available. You can’t search by attorney, or goods and services, or use Boolean operators. Those features would be nice, but they’re icing on the cake. It would also help to know the currency of the database, i.e., the date through which the information is accurate. However, this is such a great leap forward, I’m not complaining.

What’s important is the database is meaningfully populated with relevant data. It’s a useful tool that trademark owners should search before making their own filings in Washington.