How to Find a Registered Trademark for a Product

Trademarks, also known as brand names, are distinctive marks or symbols that entities use to distinguish their products or services from those of their competitors. Registration of trademarks is not required but recommended, in most cases, because registration offers many advantages. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has provided a search engine, called Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to allow the public to search for registered trademarks for free.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer and Internet connection

1. 
   Website of USPTO

   Go to http://uspto.gov and click on "Trademarks" on the left-hand side of the page. This will open up a list of links. Click on "Search TM database (TESS)"

2. Click on "New User Form Search (Basic)."

3. In the box next to "Search Term," type in the product name. Try to make your search term as broad as possible for the initial search. For example, if you are searching for the trademark for "Coca-Cola," type in just "Coca" for your for first search. Once you have typed your search term(s), click on "Submit Query."

4. The next page will give you a list of trademarks, if any, that matches your search term(s). Note that the search term "Coca" produced 198 records spanning 50 pages. In this case, unless you see the particular trademark you are looking for on the initial page, hit the "back" button and refine your search terms.

5. Once you find the trademark you are looking for, click on the serial number to view the information.

Tips & Warnings

• This article explains how to do a basic search on the TESS system. However, just because a trademark does not show up in a TESS search or the trademark shows up as being "expired" does not mean that a particular trademark is not in use. To conduct a full search, one should also search the U.S. pending trademark applications, state registrations, market directories, telephone direction listings, domain names, online databases and industry publications directed to the goods or services being searched, trade name listings and reported decisions.

References

• USPTO
• "Trademark Law, a Practitioner's Guide"; Siegrun D. Kane; 2005

Who Can Help Sponsored

• Register Your Trademark Online - LegalZoom