Trademark Search & Monitoring Comparison

Australian Trade Mark Search vs. DPMAregister

At a glance

Best for

Best for applicants and practitioners who want to search the Australian trade mark register themselves before filing with IP Australia.

DPMAregister

Best for

Best for applicants and owners of German trade marks who want to search the official register and watch it for new filings themselves.

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion	Australian Trade Mark Search	DPMAregister
Starting price	Not stated	Free of charge The DPMA states that DPMAregister and the DPMAkurier alerts can be used free of charge; the DPMA connectPlus interface is supplied under an agreement against payment of the marginal cost of providing the data.
Output	Lists of matching trade marks with full record details, an Excel export of up to 2,000 results, print-friendly pages and PDF reports	Configurable result lists that can be organised and downloaded, and register entries that print or download as a complete register extract
API	Australian Trade Mark Search API with a quick search and a lookup by trade mark number, using OAuth 2.0 client credentials	DPMA connectPlus, an automated interface to the register and publication data, supplied under an agreement
Languages	Not stated	English and German
Hosting	Web app at search.ipaustralia.gov.au	Web app at register.dpma.de
Made in	Australia	Germany
Registers and countries covered	Registered and pending Australian trade marks, including trade marks registered with the International Bureau designating Australia, which are found by their international registration number	German trade marks filed since 1 January 1998, registered German marks since October 1894 insofar as they were not deleted before 1 January 1995, an excerpt of rejected and withdrawn German marks, EU trade marks from the EUIPO, and WIPO international registrations where Germany or the EU is designated. The DPMA does not warrant the accuracy and completeness of the EU and international data and points to the EUIPO and WIPO databases for a full search
Word, phonetic and image search	Word searches with exact, prefix, suffix, part, stem, fuzzy and phonetic options, phrases with AND, OR, NOT, quotes and wildcards, image search by visual similarity from an uploaded PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP or SVG up to 8 MB, advanced image search with standard image constituent terms, and searches by number or range, owner, party, address for service, goods and services text, status, dates, type and flags such as non-use	Basic, advanced and expert searches; the expert search queries register fields such as mark, type of mark, proprietor, classes, goods and services, colours and dates with comparison and proximity operators and wildcards, and figurative elements are searchable by Vienna Classification. The DPMA states that a similarity search is not possible
Goods, services and Nice classes	Searches across the 45 classes, with associated classes included by default; choosing Single limits the search to the classes entered	Classes and goods and services are search fields of their own, with a link to the internationally harmonised classification of goods and services
Clearance and conflict screening	A search of the register and not a clearance opinion: IP Australia says a trade marks attorney or lawyer can undertake comprehensive searches for prior registered or unregistered trade marks, and offers a separate free app, TM Checker, for feedback on the likely success of an application	A register search and not a clearance opinion: the DPMA does not check during the application procedure whether identical or similar marks are already registered, refers to commercial providers for similarity searches, and names patent information centres that search on your behalf for a fee
Watch and alerts	Saved searches in My Searches and in search spaces do not refresh on their own: IP Australia states their results only update when the searches are rerun, with a Rerun all searches button; search spaces are kept for 100 days after last access	DPMAkurier sends automated e-mails daily, weekly or monthly on new publications and register changes, monitoring by file or publication number, by name, by class, by name and class, or user-defined; registration is needed before first use, the number of monitoring searches is not limited, and the DPMA states it can be used free of charge
Reports and exports	Result sets of up to 2,000 export as a Microsoft Excel document, results print as a plain print-friendly page, and the advanced view generates PDF reports; searches run in the advanced view are kept in a My Searches list	Result lists can be configured, organised and downloaded, a register entry prints or downloads as a complete register extract, and issues of the Markenblatt trade mark journal from 1950 onwards can be downloaded
Integrations and API	Australian Trade Mark Search API with a quick search endpoint returning matching trade mark numbers, filterable by type, status and update date, and an endpoint returning the publicly available details of one trade mark; access is requested through the IP Australia developer portal and uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials	DPMA connectPlus gives automated online access to the register and publication data with the query options of the expert search, plus weekly data packages for trade marks, usually on Fridays; data is supplied on the basis of an agreement against payment of the marginal cost of providing it
Deployment	Browser-based	Browser-based
Support	Not stated	Phone
Onboarding	Documentation and knowledge base	more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Live online demos and webinars, On-site training

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Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.

The short version

Key Differences

Hosting Australian Trade Mark Search Web app at search.ipaustralia.gov.au DPMAregister Web app at register.dpma.de
Made in Australian Trade Mark Search Australia DPMAregister Germany
Output Australian Trade Mark Search Lists of matching trade marks with full record details, an Excel export of up to 2,000 results, print-friendly pages and PDF reports DPMAregister Configurable result lists that can be organised and downloaded, and register entries that print or download as a complete register extract
API Australian Trade Mark Search Australian Trade Mark Search API with a quick search and a lookup by trade mark number, using OAuth 2.0 client credentials DPMAregister DPMA connectPlus, an automated interface to the register and publication data, supplied under an agreement
Registers and countries covered Australian Trade Mark Search Registered and pending Australian trade marks, including trade marks registered with the International Bureau designating Australia, which are found by their international registration number DPMAregister German trade marks filed since 1 January 1998, registered German marks since October 1894 insofar as they were not deleted before 1 January 1995, an excerpt of rejected and withdrawn German marks, EU trade marks from the EUIPO, and WIPO international registrations where Germany or the EU is designated. The DPMA does not warrant the accuracy and completeness of the EU and international data and points to the EUIPO and WIPO databases for a full search

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

Australian Trade Mark Search

Strengths

From IP Australia, the office that examines Australian applications
Phonetic, fuzzy and stem word searches for spelling and sound variants
Image search by visual similarity from an uploaded logo
Excel export of up to 2,000 results and a documented search API

Limitations

Covers the Australian register only; other countries need other databases
The official pages describe no watch or email alerts for new filings
The image search does not read words inside an image, so they have to be typed separately

DPMAregister

Strengths

Covers EU trade marks and international registrations protected in Germany as well as German marks
Watch alerts by name, class or file number, sent daily, weekly or monthly
Expert search with proximity operators and Vienna Classification codes
Telephone hotline for search questions and online-assisted searches with DPMA experts

Limitations

No similarity search, as the DPMA itself notes
The DPMA does not warrant the accuracy and completeness of the EU and international data
Covers marks with protection in Germany only

Plans

Pricing

Australian Trade Mark Search

Price on Request

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DPMAregister

DPMAregister search Free of charge Online search of the official register and publication data, from the beginner's search to the expert search.
DPMAkurier alerts Free of charge Alert e-mails on new publications and register changes; registration needed before first use.
DPMA connectPlus Not stated Automated interface to the register data, supplied under an agreement against payment of the marginal cost of providing the data.

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What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

Australian Trade Mark Search

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

DPMAregister

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

How we check reviews

Before sending, the author has to confirm three things: that they have used the product themselves, that they work neither for the vendor nor for a competitor, and that nobody is paying them for the review. We also ask whether the vendor invited them to write it. That answer is required, either answer is accepted, and it stays with the review.

Every review is read by a person before it appears. An email address is required and is confirmed: we send a link to it, and a review does not reach us until the author opens that link, so a review has a sender who was reachable at least once rather than being anonymous. Where what somebody writes needs backing, we ask them for evidence that they used the product, and a review that does not get it is not published. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.

What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on their own declaration, on whatever we ask them for, and on the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.

A vendor cannot buy a review, and cannot have one removed or changed because they dislike it. We remove or edit a review only if it breaks our rules or the law, for example a false statement of fact. Paid placement has no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.

Read the full version on our methodology page

Where this comes from

Australian Trade Mark Search https://ipaustralia.gov.au/trade-marks/search-existing-trade-marks · checked against the official source on 2026-11-08

DPMAregister https://www.dpma.de/english/search/dpmaregister/index.html · checked against the official source on 2026-11-10

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.