Professionals from the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPC RAS) have developed an application that allows for determining the originality of logos and trademarks for Russian companies. The development can be used by analysts, experts and lawyers to investigate crimes in the intellectual property area.
Logos turned to be an integral part of modern companies, especially those that deliver services to mass consumers. Therefore, worldwide there exist millions of different logos, and this circumstance for various reasons (accidental or intentional) poses a threat of violating the intellectual property rights.
“We have developed an online application aimed at determining the logos’ uniqueness. Each user can customize the application to the required parameters and immediately determine whether the logo intersects with existing trademarks by a number of parameters. In addition, our program will provide explanations why some logos are alike,” says Andrey Chechulin, Head of the International Center for Digital Forensics (ICDF) at SPC RAS.
The program seeks for the logos’ likeness by five main parameters: by the correspondence of the used colors (RGB color model), by the similarity of the elements’ arrangement and style, by the content, writing and sound of the logo’s text, by matching the individual elements of the sign, as well as by global features (similar shape, geometry or idea of the logo).
Due to the fact that the application developed by the SPC RAS researchers considers a greater number of parameters of the logos' similarity than most existing analogues, the informativity of the study increases. Besides, the developed algorithms allow for high search speed. The application is based on a neural network that has undergone special adaptation and has been tested on the international reference database of logos METU Trademark Dataset, encompassing several million logos of various companies.
“I will note that the application does not identify the fact of copyright infringement in regard to a trademark, however, the analytics received via its help on the similarity degree of this or that logo can be used in litigations. The program objective is to significantly increase the speed of assessment and investigation of potential copyright infringement,” explains Andrey Chechulin.
Currently the researchers have started testing the application that uses materials provided by partner companies. The International Center for Digital Forensics was established in 2021 on the SPC RAS basis. The purpose of the center is to assist law enforcement officials and lawyers of Russia and other countries to solve crimes related to the use of digital technologies: data theft and corruption, disruption of the functionality of programs and devices, illegal use of intellectual property.