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The prototype of a tool to check whether the name of a trade mark application has a meaning in any of the EU's official languages, is published as open source by the EU's Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), the agency that is responsible for registering trade marks and designs.

The tool, titled Langcheck, compares the language of a submitted trade marks submitted with the 'Absolute Grounds for Refusal' of article 7 of the EU's trade mark regulation. Currently, this verification is made with the help of a team of linguists. 

One of these grounds for refusal is that a trade mark can not be registered in the EU if it describes exclusively characteristics including the kind, the quality or quantity of the goods or services. And that principle is to be respected in any of the EU's 23 official languages.

"This means we have to know what a given word or denomination could mean in any of these languages", explains one of the OHIM developers, Francisco Alvarez, in his introduction to Langcheck.

The first, alpha version of the tool is already able to compare terms in dictionaries in sixteen languages. Alvarez hopes that Langcheck will attract attention from other trade mark software specialist. "We especially welcome contributors to help improving dictionary files in all of the EU's languages."

Langcheck is built on top of Compass and Lucene, open source search engine projects, all three done in mostly the Java programming language. The tool itself is written in Grails, a Java dialect tailored for the quick development of web-based applications.

OHIM's Langcheck is published as open source using the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).

More information:

OHIM Langcheck

Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM)

EU's trade mark regulations (pdf)