A Conceptual Model of Trademark Retrieval based on Conceptual Similarity

The rapid expansion of e-commerce at the beginning of 21st century has had a significant impact on intellectual property management. A particular area of concern is the misuse of trademarks and trademark protection. Trademarks are proprietary words and images with high reputational value; they are important assets, often used as a marketing tool, which require infringement protection. One of the issues considered during infringement litigation is the visual, conceptual and phonetic similarity of different trademarks. In particular, the conceptual similarity of trademarks is an area never previously studied in information retrieval. This paper focuses on this important aspect by proposing a conceptual model of the comparison process, aimed at retrieving conceptually similar trademarks. The proposed model employs natural language processing and semantic technology to compute the conceptual similarity between trademarks.