USPTO Trademark Search: How to Use the Trademark Search System (Formerly TESS)

If you have tried to open the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) recently, you found it gone. On November 30, 2023, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) retired TESS and replaced it with a modern cloud-based tool simply called Trademark Search, available at tmsearch.uspto.gov. The name changed and the interface is faster, but the job is the same: it lets anyone search the federal register of registered and pending trademarks for free.

Knowing how to run that search well is the first real skill in trademark practice. A clearance search is what stands between a business and an expensive rebrand — or a refusal to register under Section 2(d) of the Trademark Act. This guide covers what the tool is, how to use it, how to read what it returns, and why a careful search matters.

What replaced TESS?

The new Trademark Search system draws on the same underlying data TESS used — every active federal application and registration — but rebuilds the experience. You get a single search box that accepts both simple keyword queries and structured expressions, faster results, and a cleaner way to filter by status, register, and class. Old TESS links and bookmarks no longer resolve, so if you learned the tool years ago, the search logic below is what carries over.

What a federal trademark search covers — and what it misses

The USPTO tool searches only the federal register: marks registered with, or applied for at, the USPTO. That is essential, but it is not a complete clearance. It does not show:

  • Common-law marks — unregistered names that still carry enforceable rights from actual use in commerce.
  • State trademark registrations, which live in separate state databases.
  • Business names, domain names, and social handles that may signal a conflict.

A clean federal search is necessary but not sufficient. Professionals pair it with common-law and state searches before advising a client that a mark is available.

Running a basic search

Start at tmsearch.uspto.gov and type the wordmark you are checking. The results list returns each matching record with its serial number (assigned at filing), registration number (assigned only once a mark registers), owner, the goods or services claimed, the international class, and a status indicator. Click any record to open its detail view, then follow through to TSDR for the full status and document history.

Advanced searching: operators, fields, and wildcards

Exact-match searching misses most real conflicts, because confusion does not require identical spelling. The tool supports structured queries so you can cast a wider, smarter net:

  • Boolean operators — combine terms with AND, OR, and NOT to broaden or narrow results. See our guide to Boolean and field operators for the exact syntax.
  • Wildcards — a truncation symbol captures plurals, suffixes, and spelling variants in one query.
  • Field tags — restrict a term to a specific field, such as the owner name or the goods-and-services text, to search by owner or by class.
  • Design search codes — logos are indexed by six-digit codes from the USPTO Design Search Code Manual, so you can find visually similar marks even when no words match.

Reading the results: live, dead, and which register

Two fields decide whether a record matters. Live/Dead tells you if the record is still active; a "dead" application was abandoned or a registration was cancelled or expired, and generally poses less risk. The register distinguishes the Principal Register (full statutory protections, including a path to incontestability) from the Supplemental Register (for descriptive marks not yet distinctive). A live mark on the Principal Register for related goods is the kind of result that stops a filing.

Why a thorough search matters: Section 2(d) and the DuPont factors

When you file, a USPTO examining attorney runs their own search and can refuse registration under Section 2(d) of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1052(d)) if your mark so resembles an existing mark that it is likely to cause confusion. Likelihood of confusion is analyzed under the thirteen DuPont factors, from the landmark case In re E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 476 F.2d 1357 (C.C.P.A. 1973) — the similarity of the marks, the relatedness of the goods and services, the channels of trade, and the conditions of purchase, among others. A good pre-filing search is essentially a preview of that analysis: it surfaces the confusingly similar marks before you spend the application fee.

Search tips that catch more conflicts

  • Phonetic equivalents — "Kwik" and "Quick," "Lite" and "Light." Sound-alike marks are routinely found confusingly similar.
  • Alternate spellings and roots — search the root of a term to catch derivatives, plurals, and compounds.
  • Translations — under the doctrine of foreign equivalents, a foreign word may be confusable with its English meaning, so search both.
  • The right class — goods and services are grouped into the 45 international classes under the Nice Classification; a conflict usually lives in the same or a closely related class.

Search is step one

Pulling up records is easy; knowing which ones actually threaten a mark — and how an examining attorney will weigh them — is where trademark judgment begins. Once you can read a search like a practitioner, the natural next steps are checking a specific mark's file in TSDR and understanding the full registration process from application to maintenance.