Checking if particular word is trademarked

Is there any tool out there that I can search to see if a particular word/phrase is trademarked or copyright protected?

 

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the Federal agency for granting U.S. patents and registering trademarks. Their website offers searches for U.S. trademarks:

http://www.uspto.gov/

 

And here's the database of registered trademarks for the European Union:

http://oami.europa.eu/ows/rw/pages/QPLUS/databases/searchCTM.en.do

As the site cautions, just because you don't find a word in the database, it doesn't mean that it isn't trademarked (the database only goes back to 1996).

Here is what the US PTO says about trademark registration:

http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp#Search005

 

No complete search tool exists on the open market - which is why a good trademark search runs several hundred dollars and up. The USPTO does not show common law trademarks. Your usage (classification) of the mark will be a factor.

 

And copyright protection is even harder to check. Generally speaking, a short phrase is not entitled to copyright protection as an individual work, but a phrase may be contained in a copyrighted work. Since there is no requirement that works be registered in order to secure copyright protection, it is nearly impossible to determine whether a particular passage is subject to an author's copyright. Of course, if you can find the phrase in a source in the public domain (such a a work published prior to 1923 or one where the copyright is known to have lapsed), then you can safely use the phrase without fear of infringing upon a copyright (but you still need to consider trademark rights).