Inspiration
We were inspired by general misconceptions about trademarks and the need for more transparency in today's climate due to regular exposés that further damage the public's trust in institutions, companies, and people. There's also an increased need to know what's trademarked for entrepreneurs, especially minority business owners, in order to avoid litigation and greater protection from the complexities of the system.
What it does
The website displays data pulled from the Trademark Electronic Search System Database.
How we built it
We used HTML, Javascript, CSS, w3, and Visual Studio.
Challenges we ran into
Originally we wanted to use a search bar, but it stopped functioning. As a solution, we decided to instead pick a group of well-known companies and show examples of trademarks they've applied for to the USPTO.
There were issues with text alignment as well, which further impeded us from exploring the full extent of our idea.
We were also inexperienced with CSS, so it was a lot to juggle trying to use that program. Our team started out as 4, but one of them stopped working with us.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We were able to make a functioning dropdown menu and a table.
What we learned
Don't bite more than you can chew. At times, it felt disappointing when we weren't able to fully realize the extent of what we envisioned, but that's par for the course. I think it would've helped if I had some kind of coding background or at least a grasp of it because I've been lost for
What's next for What's Hiding Underneath?
An expansion of the companies featured or using the original idea of allowing a user to search a specific term to see if it's been trademarked by a company. We want to explore the option of web scraping, but we have no real experience.
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