IP Australia partners with Aussie tech startup to rebuild its IP rights search engines

The Australian government agency responsible for administrating Intellectual Property rights and legislation related to patents, trademarks, designs, and plant breeders' rights, IP Australia, will partner with Australian startup TrademarkVision to rebuild its major IP Rights search engines.

Starting with its trademark search engine ATMOSS, the project will run over the next year and is expected to give ATMOSS a much-needed refresh and additional search functionality.

TrademarkVision is an image recognition technology company which has developed the world’s first visual search engine for trademarks.

TrademarkVision provides global protection, helping law firms, companies and global government agencies to protect trademarks against potential infringement.

Prior to TrademarkVision, searching for trademarks could only be done via text descriptions or design codes, which vary from country to country and can often be quite subjective, meaning companies must wade through thousands of search results.

Formally known as See-Out, TrademarkVision raised seed capital from early stage investors including QUT Creative Enterprise Australia and Scale Angels, after being a finalist in QUT Creative Enterprise Australia’s Creative3 Pitch.

Anna Rooke, CEO of QUT Creative Enterprise Australia (CEA) and TrademarkVision board member, explains that CEA’s investment in TrademarkVision was the first investment through their CEA Startup Fund.

“The creative industries sector is often underestimated in Australia. It employs more people than mining and contributes $35 billion to our GDP however creative startups struggle to find funding as they are often viewed as high-risk by investors,” says Rooke.

“TrademarkVision is such a great fit for our CEA Startup Fund, which is why we decided to invest in the company.

“We have been with them every step of the way and are delighted to see that TrademarkVision will now be able to deliver their service to the global market through this partnership with IP Australia.”

Trademark Vision CEO and Co-Founder Sandra Mau explains the startup is extremely excited to be working with IP Australia.

“After a period of exploration and prototyping across our office and in Canberra, we have won the pitch process and will begin working on rebuilding IP Australia’s major IP Rights search engines in November,” says Mau, who was named as Engineer Australia’s Top 100 Most Influential Engineers this year as well as Pollenizer’s Top 50 Female Programmers in Australia last year.

“We would like to thank IP Australia for its commitment and desire to utilise the best technology in the world in its search engines and look forward to working closely throughout the project and, ultimately, improving the industry.”

IP Australia General Manager Robert Bollard explains the organisation selected TrademarkVision, after a lengthy tender process.

“We want to build the best IP Rights search engine in the world and feel that working with TrademarkVision will definitely help us achieve our goal,” says Bollard.

“This long term partnership will see a complete rebuild of our major IP Rights search engines, starting with ATMOSS and will focus on all ATMOSS users including the external IP professionals, trademark owners as well as internal trademark examiners.

“It was a lengthy tender process because we wanted to make sure that the company we choose to work with aligned with us and would give our examiners internally a much better service, not just now but into the future.”


About TrademarkVision

Almost a decade of image recognition research has gone into making TrademarkVision, the preferred solution for brand protection. The TrademarkVision system provides a full text, word and image search solution that makes it quick and easy to find similar marks - all without the use of design codes. Our award-winning image recognition technology provides access to global datasets all from within the TrademarkVision system. This incorporates country datasets such USA, Canada, European Union’s Community Trade Marks, France, Australia and New Zealand as well as International Registrations (WIPO). Visit www.trademark.vision to find out more.


About QUT Creative Enterprise Australia

More information about the Creative3 Pitch – www.pitch.creative3.com.au 

For more information about QUT Creative Enterprise Australia visit http://qutcea.com/

About QUT Creative Enterprise Australia, the Creative3 Pitch and the CEA Startup Fund

QUT Creative Enterprise Australia (CEA) helps start, grow, scale and connect creative companies. Providing essential business skills and pragmatic training focused on company growth and investment, CEA accelerates companies with a focus on design, fashion, entertainment, photography, music, film and television, digital technology, games and interactive content.

The 2015 Creative3 Pitch was held in Brisbane on 17 September and is Australia’s only dedicated creative industries pitch platform where entrants from all over Australia are narrowed down to eight semi-finalist pitches. Four finalists are then selected to present their company to potential investors.

The CEA Startup Fund is the first dedicated investment fund in Australia that specialises in accelerating the growth of companies in the creative industries and was established by QUT Creative Enterprise Australia. $1.2M is available for commercial investment through the Fund, with a mandate to generate a commercial return while helping creative businesses access much-needed capital for growth. Since launching in July 2013, the CEA Startup Fund has invested in a visual search technology company, TrademarkVision (previously See-Out Pty Ltd), prom dress fast-fashion e-retailer Fame and Partners, augmented reality nail art company Metaverse Makeovers, crowd-sourced live music performance start up GiggedIn and quality bespoke goods marketplace Handkrafted.