Trademark retrieval based on phonetic similarity

Trademarks are visual symbols with high reputational value, which requires protection. This paper proposes an algorithm to retrieve phonetically similar trademarks that can be used as a means for supporting trademark examination during the registration process. The algorithm employs a phonology based string similarity algorithm together with a typography mapping and token rearrangement to compute a phonetic similarity between trademarks. The trademark phonetic similarity score is then computed from the employed phonetic similarity algorithm. The proposed algorithm advances the state-of-the-art in trademark retrieval by providing a mechanism to compare trademarks with special characters or symbols phonetically. The proposed algorithm is tested on 1,400 trademarks obtained from real court cases between 1999 and 2012. The proposed algorithm improves the R-precision score by 14% and 17% compared with two state-of-the-art methods.