Searching your exact name is how people miss the conflict.
The USPTO can refuse a mark that merely resembles one already registered. So the search that matters is not your spelling — it is every spelling an examiner would compare it to. This builds that list for you, free, and then you run it on the USPTO's own system.
A search strategy, not a search result and not legal advice. We hold no copy of the register. We are not a law firm and we are not affiliated with the USPTO.
Three gaps between “nothing found” and “safe to file”.
Refusals are common, and the government fees are not refunded when one lands. These are the reasons a name that looked free was not.
The test is confusion, not spelling
An examiner weighs whether buyers would likely be confused, so marks that sound alike count as similar even when written differently. Searching your own spelling tells you about your spelling and nothing else.
The register is not the whole picture
Rights can exist from use alone, without any filing. A business that has traded under the name for years may be able to stop you even though it appears nowhere in the USPTO's records, and no register search will show it.
Classes decide whether a hit matters
The same word is often registered by different owners in unrelated fields. Search without narrowing and you drown in irrelevant hits; narrow to the wrong classes and you miss the one that counts.
The official system, and what changed.
The federal register is searchable free by anyone at tmsearch.uspto.gov. If a guide, course or textbook told you to use TESS, that system was retired by the USPTO in 2023 and replaced by this one — what happened to TESS covers the change and what moved where.
To check a specific application or registration you already have a number for, the record itself lives in TSDR, the USPTO's status system. If you have a status code and want it in plain English, our USPTO status code library covers every code in the published table.
Searching the register is one of three checks worth doing before you commit to a name. The other two are whether the domain and the social handles are free, which our free brand check looks at, and what filing in your classes would actually cost, which the cost estimator works out.
Asked and answered.
How do I search the USPTO trademark database?
Search it free on the USPTO's own system at tmsearch.uspto.gov. The part that decides whether the search is worth anything is what you type into it. Searching only your exact spelling is the most common mistake: the USPTO can refuse a mark that merely resembles an existing one, so a real search also covers sound-alikes, misspellings, the distinctive stem of the word, and the specific classes covering what you sell. This page builds that list of searches for your name, and you run them on the USPTO system.
Is the USPTO trademark search free?
Yes. Searching the federal register on the USPTO's own system costs nothing and needs no account. Anyone charging you purely to look at the register is charging for convenience or for interpretation, not for access. What is not free is professional judgement about what the results mean, which is a different thing from the lookup.
What happened to TESS?
The USPTO retired TESS, the Trademark Electronic Search System, in 2023 and replaced it with a cloud-based search system at tmsearch.uspto.gov. Plenty of guides, textbooks and course materials still tell people to use TESS, which is why so many searches for it continue. If you were sent to TESS, the new system is where to go instead.
Does a clear search mean my name is available?
No, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the whole process. A federal register search sees registered and pending marks in the USPTO's records. It does not see unregistered common-law rights, which can exist simply because somebody else used the name in business first; it does not see state trademark registrations; and it does not see applications filed so recently that they have not appeared yet. A clear search means nothing obvious was found. That is genuinely worth knowing, and it is not the same as safe.
Why do I need to search misspellings of my own name?
Because the USPTO's test is whether consumers would likely be confused, not whether two strings match. Marks that sound the same are treated as similar even when spelled differently, so a registration for one spelling can block another. If your name is Kandy, a registration for Candy in your line of goods is the conflict that matters, and an exact-spelling search will never show it to you.
Do I need to search every class?
Not usually. A conflict matters where the goods or services overlap, which is why the same word can be registered by different owners in unrelated fields. Narrow to the classes covering what you actually sell, plus any closely related field a customer might assume is you. If you are not sure which classes those are, describe what you sell in the planner above and it will name them.
Is this a trademark clearance search?
No. This page holds no copy of the register and returns no results about your name - it builds the list of searches to run and tells you where to run them. A clearance search is a professional opinion on whether a mark can be adopted and registered, which takes judgement about similarity, relatedness of goods and the strength of existing marks. We are not a law firm and we are not affiliated with the USPTO.