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:
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
You can search for a term by following the steps 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 |
If you enter a term that you do not get any results for, you could try to:
Note:
When entering the description of goods and services:
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.
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.
To verify your list of terms, you should follow the below steps:
The results show the terms accepted in the selected office. The following columns will appear in the “Verify results”section:
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:
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.
You can translate a term (one or several words) by following the steps below:
You can maintain or adjust these criteria throughout your search.
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.
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:
The results are displayed as follows:
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: