TrademarkNow Launches A Community Built Tool for Trademark Clearance

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Digitalization is transforming the way businesses operate, and legal industry is not an exception. Legal tech experiences a growing number of digital solutions and innovations that make legal services more efficient and transparent and gives rise to new success stories in the field.

Earlier this month Helsinki-based TrademarkNow released the new version of its flagship NameCheck trademark clearance product. NameCheck’s interface was developed with the assistance of industry experts and the company’s enthusiastic client base, who have been keen to help drive the evolution of a system designed to resolve the many time-consuming roadblocks of typical trademark processes.

Traditionally, trademark searches have involved a number of manual checks and several days of work to be carried out by qualified legal professionals and paralegals. TrademarkNow’s technology significantly improved the speed at which this process is completed and requires no legal expertise to execute.

New features include flexible search result viewing panels, adjustable risk scores and filtering options, greater customisation of downloadable reports, and a new executive summary at the head of each report which in many cases will permit clearance at a glance. Company’s cutting-edge system utilises state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques to produce models that seamlessly take real-world complexities into account.

TrademarkNow also announced a €3 million funding round. The company received €3 million from Karma Ventures, Balderton Capital and Montiko GmbH, plus additional €2 million loan from Finnvera. 

“The funding allows us to buy new databases and also makes it possible to grow our sales and product development teams in Finland and Ireland. The ultimate goal for us is to double the turnover annually.” – says Mikael Kolehmainen, CEO of TrademarkNow.

To date, TrademarkNow covers the European Union, the US and continues to add PTO databases at a rapid clip, including the addition this month of 15 Middle Eastern countries’ databases. The previous investment in 2014 by Balderton Capital enabled the company’s rapid expansion to 37 employees and the addition of a presence in the US, Ireland, UK and Germany to the headquarters in Helsinki, Finland.

“Significant and quickly growing global customer base is a great proof of the value that TrademarkNow has created”, comments Margus Uudam, Partner at Karma Ventures.