ASEAN TMclass - Help

When applying to register a trademark, you need to identify the goods and/or services for which you wish to protect your trademark. These will be the goods and/or services that you either already use your trademark for, or are likely to do so in the near future.

Goods and services are divided into 45 different classes according to the International Classification of Goods and Services for the purpose of the registration of marks. These are 34 classes of goods and 11 classes of services.

ASEAN TMclass is a tool that will help you determine the class or classes for your goods and services.

ASEAN TMclass offers you four main functionalities:

  • BROWSE: You can see the full structure of the Goods and Services contained in the database.
  • FIND: You can search for Goods and Services descriptions (terms) and find out which class they are in before you apply for trademark protection.
  • VERIFY: You can check if a list of Goods and Services in a given language appears in the database of another participating Trademark Office with the same working language.
  • TRANSLATE: You can translate a term or a list of terms to get equivalents in one of the other languages ASEAN TMclass is available in.

CLASSIFICATION STRUCTURE

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While maintaining the international standard for classification (Nice Classification System), ASEAN TMclass organises the goods and services in a hierarchical structure (Tree Structure or Taxonomy).

NICE CLASSIFICATION

Nice classification is the standard for classification of goods and services in trademark applications and registrations.

The Nice Classification consists of a list of classes together with explanatory notes and an alphabetical list of goods and services. There are 34 classes of goods and 11 classes of services. The class headings describe in very broad terms the nature of the goods or services contained in each class. The explanatory notes of a given class describe in greater detail the types of products or services included in that class. 

TAXONOMY STRUCTURE

Taxonomy is a classification assistant.

While maintaining the Nice classification system, Taxonomy organises the goods and services in a hierarchical structure with smaller groups within each goods and services class, relating to market reality.

Taxonomy is not a new classification system nor does it replace Nice classification. Taxonomy uses the Nice classification as a foundation and builds upon it. The first level of Taxonomy is taken from the Nice Classification and is the division into 45 classes.

BROWSE TERMS

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If you want to get an overview of the terms in the database, you can BROWSE the Taxonomy Tree.

To BROWSE, click on the “Browse Term” link that you can find on the header bar.

 You will then see the full content of the database in the right side of the “results” section while you see the complete Taxonomy tree structure in the left hand side. Hovering over the class number on the right, a comprehensive overview of what goods/services are in that classis revealed. Classes can be expanded to reveal the next level of the hierarchical structure of any class. This can be done by clicking the “” symbol.

Let´s see the hierarchical structure under class 5 and how it can help you the BROWSE option.

  • If you expand class 5, we can see 5 sub-groups on the first level. Three of them have yet another hierarchical level. If we click to expand those three subgroups, the “Hygiene preparations and articles” sub-group shows an additional expandable sub-group.

Clicking on a group will show the terms within it on the right side of the screen. When you find a term that describes your product or service, you can click on the checkbox on the far right of the term to save it in a list. You can choose as many terms as you consider descriptive of your goods/services. The list of saved terms, “My List”, appears at the top right of the header bar of the tool.

You can click on the “My List” link to access your list. By doing so a new screen will open with the detail of all terms saved to your list. On the right of this screen, you can see in which IP Office(s) database(s) your terms are accepted. You can also download your list of terms by clicking in the “Actions” dropdown menu on the top left of this screen and choosing the format the list should be downloaded into.

FIND

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When making an application it is necessary to define what exactly your trade mark needs protection for. In order to do this you are asked to classify the Goods and Services which simply means that you put them into groupings according to the class that they belong to. The process will be much faster if you use the classification terms that are already approved by the trade mark office where you wish to file for trade mark protection. The find term option will allow you to find approved terms to classify your Goods and Services.

If you know what goods/services you require, you can search for them directly. If you are not sure how best to describe your goods and services, this functionality is particularly useful. 

FIND A TERM

You can search for a term by following the steps below:

  1. First, choose the language you want to search in from the “Language” drop down menu on the left of the “Find Term” section.
  2. Now you would choose the offices for which you will be doing the search. Select the participating office(s) you would like to limit your search results to by selecting/unselecting the office(s) name in the right of the “Find Term” section.
  3. Then you can enter the term you would like to search for in the “Find term” text box. Click the field in order to do so.
  4. You can limit your search results to one or several specific class(es) by selecting them in the “Nice Class” box (optional). Furthermore, if you would like to reduce your search to the official alphabetical List of Nice Classification, without taking into account other terms that the office(s) you are searching in might have also accepted, you should click on the checkbox under “Source”(Official Alphabetical List of Nice Classification).
    Please note that this feature is currently working in English only.
  5. If you would like to further refine your search, two additional search options are available to you:
    • Search mode - Using the drop down menu, select in which mode you wish to search for Goods and Services descriptions (terms):
      • Word prefix: If multiple search words are entered such as 'bab nap', the search engine looks for occurrences of both 'babies' and 'napkins' in any order. It does not look for classification descriptions with either 'babies' or 'napkins'.
      • Full phrase: Finds terms that include the input exactly as entered in the text box.
      • Exact match: finds terms that are the same as what is entered in the text box above.
    • Master term: There may be many similar terms that represent the same/similar Goods and Services. Each group of terms has a master term that represents that particular concept. Beside the master term a concept can contain 'Variants' (morphological variations of the same term) or 'Equivalents' (terms with the same meaning as the master term, and containing equivalent word(s) - car <-> automobile in the example below).

      If you wish to limit your search to the master terms, click on the checkbox under "Master term” (Show only master terms).

      Term

      Type

      Automobile body fillers

      Master term

      Fillers for automobile bodies

      Variant

      Fillers for car bodies

      Equivalent term

      Car body fillers

      Variant
  6. You can define how you would like your results to be displayed, ordered by relevance, class or alphabetically. You can do so by choosing your preferred option from the dropdown menu under “Sort by”.
  7. Press the “Search” button on the right. The results of your search will appear below.

If you enter a term that you do not get any results for, you could try to:

  1. Widen your criteria (eg: from “bicycle hire” to “bicycle”)
  2. Choose other words (eg: from “bicycle hire” to “bicycle rental”)

Note:

When entering the description of goods and services:

  • You can only use alphanumeric characters - this is not case sensitive.
  • You can only search for one term at a time.
  • If multiple search words are entered such as 'babies napkins', the search engine looks for occurrences of both 'babies' and 'napkins' in any order. It does not look for classification descriptions with either 'babies' or 'napkins'
  • To include plurals in the search ('babies' and 'baby'), enter the stem ('bab'). 

Results

After pressing the “Search” button, the results will appear under the “Find term” section.

On the left of the search results, the Taxonomy Tree Structure will be displayed. This will show theclass(es) and groups the resulting term(s) belong to. By clicking on a class or group, the search results can be filtered to limit the term(s) belonging only to this specific class or group. The Taxonomy will help you identify the right term(s) for your area of business.

On the right of the search results, you can see all terms with the word you have searched for. The information provided includes:

Class: under Class you will see the class number of each classification term.

Term: under Term you will see the classification term itself.

Office: you will see the code (according to Standard-ST.3) of the office(s) that supply data for the language you chose. If there is not a green tick under the office name, it means that this term is not in the classification database of such office. It does not mean that the term will necessarily be rejected by that office.

Select: to select a classification term, click on the check box on the far right. The term will be added to “My List” (top right) for future use.

If you are interested in terms related to those displayed, click on the breadcrumb for the group that appears on the top of the displayed results (eg: if you did a search for the term “bicycle” and your area of business is “Bicycle rental”, you would have chosen the terms displayed under the Class 39, then “Transport”, then “Rental of means of transportation” . The breadcrumb on the top of the “results” area will be Class 39 > Transport > Rental of means of transportation > “bicycle”. By pressing on the link “Rental of means of transportation” in the breadcrumb, all terms of this group are displayed regardless of whether they have the search word “bicycle” in them. You can select additional terms to “My List” if in line with your business area.

VERIFY

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Once you have your list of Goods and Services for one office and want to verify which of these terms are accepted in another office that also has the same working language, you should use the VERIFY functionality. To access it, you should select “Verify G&S” from the header bar.

Instead, if you want to verify if your list of Goods and Services appears in a database of another language, then you would need to use the “Translate Term” or “Translate G&S” options first. 

VERIFY LIST OF TERMS (VERIFY G&S)

To verify your list of terms, you should follow the below steps:

  1. Select “Verify G&S” from the header bar
  2. Choose the language you want to search in from the “Language” drop down menu.
  3. Choose the office database where you want to verify your Goods and Services for. Only the offices that use the same language you have selected will appear.
  4. If you would like to verify your selected term(s) only against the official alphabetical list of Nice classification, you should tick the checkbox under “Source” (Official Alphabetical List of Nice Classification).
  5. Then you need to indicate the terms you want to verify.
    • When * shows next to a class number in the class list that appears in the middle of the screen (1 to 45), it means that terms in such class are in “My List” of terms you have previously created. Press on any of the class numbers with * and then click on the “Copy terms from My List”. This will add the terms belonging to such class for verification. Please note that you can only verify terms in one class at a time.
    • If you would like to verify the terms in your list without having to copy terms each time you select a class marked with *, you can click once on the link ”Copy all from My List” under the “Enter the list of Goods and Services” option. Every time you select a class number, the terms of My List will automatically be copied for verification.
    • Alternatively you can type or paste in the terms. If you include more than one description, each must be separated by a semicolon. (If you do not do this the list will be searched as a single description.) If you copy from My List the semicolons will be inserted for you.
  6. Now press “Verify”.

Results

The results show the terms accepted in the selected office. The following columns will appear in the “Verify results”section:

Result
  • OK: Found term in same class or identical term in a different context
  • : Found synonym in same class or found synonym in different class or entered term partially found.
  • : Found term in different class.
  • : Did not find matching term.
Input
  • Class Entered: The class chosen for the terms to be verified.
  • Term Entered: The terms you have entered.
Term found
  • Class: The class the input term has been found in for the selected office.
  • MatchedTerm: The term as it has been found in the selected database.
  • Select term: Click on the check box (far right) to select the term to be added to My List. 

TRANSLATE

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You should use the TRANSLATE functionality if you have a term or a list of terms and want to get equivalent terms in one of the other languages in ASEAN TMclass. You have two options available in relation to translations that can be found in the header bar, “Translate Term” and “Translate G&S”, and that can be used as follows:

  • Translate term: thisoption allows you to find classification terms in the ASEAN language of your choice. For any word/s that you type in, you can find Goods and Services classification terms that contain that word or words, and the translations for those terms.
  • Translate list of terms: thisoption allows you to search for equivalent terms in another language of a list of Goods and Services in one step.

Once you have the translations, you can use them in an application to the trademark office in question to get protection for your trademark in that country. 

TRANSLATE TERM

You can translate a term (one or several words) by following the steps below:

  1. First, choose the source language from the “translate from” drop down menu on the left of the “Translate Term” section
  2. Now choose the target language from the “into” drop down menu
  3. Enter the term you would like to translate in the “Translate” text box. Click the field in order to do so.
  4. You can limit your search results to one or several specific class(es) by selecting them in the “Nice Class” box (optional).
  5. Two additional optional search criteria are available to you:
    • Search mode - Using the drop down menu, select in which mode you wish to search for Goods and Services descriptions (terms):
      • Word prefix: If multiple search words are entered such as 'bab nap', the search engine looks for occurrences of both 'babies' and 'napkins' in any order. It does not look for classification descriptions with either 'babies' or 'napkins'.
      • Full phrase: Finds terms that include the input exactly as entered in the text box.
      • Exact match: finds terms that are the same as what is entered in the text box above.

    You can maintain or adjust these criteria throughout your search.

  6. Press the “Translate” button on the right. The results of your search will appear below.

Results

After pressing the “Translate” button, the results will appear under the “Translate term” section.

On the left, under “Source term”, you have the terms in the chosen source language that contain the term you have requested translation for.

On the right, under “Target term”, you have the equivalent terms in the target language chosen. Next to it, you will see the initials of the office(s) that supplied data for the language you chose.

The information provided also includes:

Class: under Class you will see the class number of each classification term.

Office: a green tick  will appear under those offices that have accepted the classification term. If there isn't a green tick  under the office name, it means that this term is not in the classification database. It does not mean that the term will necessarily be rejected by that office.

Select: to select a classification term, click on the check box on the far right. The term will be added to “My List” (top right) for future use. If you now go to “My List”, you can see that terms in the target language have been added and can be displayed is the tab that identifies such language is pressed.

TRANSLATE LIST OF TERMS (TRANSLATE G&S)

If you want to translate more than one term at once, you can use the “Translate G&S” feature from the header bar. You can do so by following the steps below:

  1. First, choose the source language from the “Translate from” drop down menu on the right of the “Translate Term” section
  2. Now choose the target language from the “Translate into” drop down menu
  3. Then you need to enter the list of terms you want to translate.
    • When * shows next to a class number in the class list in the table header (1 to 45), it means that terms in such class are in “My List” of terms you have previously created. Press on any of the class numbers with * and then click on the “Copy terms from My List”. This will add the terms belonging to such class. Please note that you can only translate terms in one class at a time.
    • If you would like to translate the terms in your list without having to copy terms each time you select a class marked with *, you can click once on the link ”Copy all from My List” under the “Enter the list of Goods and Services” option. Every time you select a class number, the terms of My List will automatically be copied for translation.
    • Alternatively you can type or paste in the terms. If you include more than one description, each must be separated by a semicolon. (If you do not do this the list will be searched as a single description.) If you copy from My List the semicolons will be inserted for you.
  4. Press the “Translate” button on the right. The results of your search will appear below.

Results

The results are displayed as follows:

Result
  • OK: Found translation in same class or identical term in a different context
  • : Found translation in same and different classes, found translation in different class, translation partially found in same and different classes, translation partially found in different class or translation partially found.
  • : Did not find matching term or found term but no translation for target language is available.
Input
  • Class Entered: The class chosen for the terms to be translated.
  • Term Entered: The terms you have entered.
Translation
  • Class: The class the input term has been found in for the targetlanguage.
  • Translation: The translation of the input term.
  • Select term: Click on the tick box (far right) to select the term to be added to My List. 

MY LIST

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The classification terms that you select from any of the main options (Find Term, Verify G&S, Translate Terms and Translate G&S) will be stored in My List (top right of the header bar). To see the selected terms click on “My List”.

A new window will open. On the top of this screen you will find a summary per language of the number of terms and classes that you have been adding to “My List”. By clicking on each box, all terms in that specific language will be displayed. The information/options for each term will include:

  • Class: The class of the term.
  • Term: The terms you have entered from any of the main options (Search, Verify list of terms, Translate term, Translate list of terms). By clicking in the term, a new screen will open with information of its associated taxonomy tree structure and the available translations of the term to other available languages and the source list(s) that the term is part of.
  • Office: A green tick  will appear under the office where the term is accepted.
  • Delete: You may remove any item from My List by clicking the  button.