To check if something is trademarked, start with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s free Trademark Center at trademarkcenter.uspto.gov, which contains every active and inactive federal trademark filing.1United States Patent and Trademark Office. Search Our Trademark Database A federal search alone won’t catch everything, though. State registrations, unregistered marks built through actual business use, and international filings can all create legal conflicts that never appear in the federal database. A thorough search before you commit to a name, logo, or slogan is the single most cost-effective step you can take to avoid an infringement dispute.
Search the USPTO Trademark Center
Trademark Center replaced the older TESS system and is accessible directly or through the trademarks tab on the main USPTO website. No account is required for basic text searches, though some newer features (like the AI-powered image search tool introduced in 2026) require a free USPTO.gov login.
Before you type anything, figure out what kind of mark you’re checking. A word mark is text only, with no particular font or design. A design mark includes a logo, stylized lettering, or graphic element. If your proposed mark is purely a name or phrase, focus on word mark searches. If it has a visual component, you’ll also want to search the USPTO’s design search codes, which organize visual elements into numbered categories. The design code manual at tmdesigncodes.uspto.gov lets you look up codes for specific shapes, animals, geometric patterns, and other graphic features.2United States Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark Design Search Code Manual
Also identify the international class of goods or services your mark would cover. The Nice Classification system divides commercial activity into 45 classes: Classes 1 through 34 cover goods, and Classes 35 through 45 cover services.3United States Patent and Trademark Office. Nice Agreement Current Edition Version – General Remarks, Class Headings Class 25 covers clothing; Class 42 covers scientific and technology services. Knowing your class helps you narrow results to marks that actually compete in your space, since two identical names in completely different industries may coexist without conflict.
Don’t search only the exact name you have in mind. Try phonetic variations, alternate spellings, and partial matches. “Klear” and “Clear” sound identical to a consumer, and an examining attorney would treat them as potential conflicts. The search tool supports boolean operators (AND, OR) and wildcard characters so you can cast a wider net. This is where most do-it-yourself searches fall short: people search only the exact phrase and miss the near-misses that would actually block their application.
Read the Results Carefully
Each result shows the mark, its current status, the owner, and other filing details. The two status labels that matter most are Live and Dead. A Live mark is either registered and active or a pending application still being processed. A Dead mark means the application was abandoned or the registration was cancelled or expired.4United States Patent and Trademark Office. Checking the Status of a Trademark Application or Registration Dead doesn’t automatically mean free for the taking. The former owner may still have common law rights if it continues to use the mark in commerce.
Click into any Live result that looks similar. The record shows the goods and services description, which spells out exactly what products or services the mark covers. This matters. A live registration for “Apex” covering industrial cleaning chemicals is a very different obstacle than “Apex” covering restaurant services. The filing date establishes who claimed the mark first under federal law.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1051 – Application for Registration; Verification
Pending applications filed on an intent-to-use basis are marks not yet in the marketplace, but they still create a barrier. If someone filed an intent-to-use application before yours, the USPTO will suspend your application until the earlier one resolves.6United States Patent and Trademark Office. Federal Trademark Searching There’s also a short lag between when a new application is filed and when it appears in the database, so today’s search won’t reflect applications submitted in the past few days.7United States Patent and Trademark Office. Trademark Processing Wait Times
Registrations also don’t last forever on autopilot. Owners must file periodic declarations of continued use and pay renewal fees, and missing those deadlines leads to cancellation.8United States Patent and Trademark Office. Registration Maintenance/Renewal/Correction Forms That’s part of why the database is full of Dead marks. It’s also why you shouldn’t assume a Dead filing is permanently abandoned without checking whether the owner still operates under that name.
Judge the Match by Likelihood of Confusion
Finding a similar mark doesn’t necessarily mean you’re blocked, and finding nothing doesn’t mean you’re safe. The legal standard the USPTO applies is likelihood of confusion. Two questions drive most decisions: how similar are the marks themselves in sight, sound, and commercial impression, and how related are the goods or services. These work on a sliding scale. The more alike the marks look and sound, the less alike the products need to be for a conflict to exist.
Other factors weigh in too, including the strength of the existing mark (made-up words like “Xerox” get broader protection than descriptive terms), whether the products share the same sales channels, how much attention consumers pay when buying, and whether actual customers have already been confused. Two marks can coexist peacefully when the products are genuinely unrelated, even if the names are similar. But products don’t need to be identical or even competitive for the relationship to create a problem. Cigars and cigar cutters come from different industries but are the kind of products consumers assume come from a single source. If your proposed mark covers goods a consumer would naturally associate with the existing mark’s goods, that relationship weighs against you.
Look Beyond the Federal Database
A clean federal search only tells you part of the story. Trademarks can gain legal protection through state registration or simply through consistent use in commerce, with no federal filing at all.
State Registrations
Every state maintains its own trademark registry, typically through the Secretary of State’s office. These registrations protect the mark only within that state’s borders, but an earlier state registration can still create a legal conflict. You’ll need to search each state individually through its government website. There’s no single national portal that aggregates state trademark filings, so if you plan to operate in multiple states, you have several databases to check. State filing fees generally run between $50 and $200, which makes state-only registration common among small businesses that skip the federal process entirely.
Common Law (Unregistered) Marks
The trickiest marks to find are the ones that were never registered anywhere. Under the Lanham Act, any business that uses a distinctive mark in commerce gains trademark rights in the geographic area where it operates, even without filing a single form.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1125 – False Designations of Origin, False Descriptions, and Dilution Forbidden A bakery in Portland that has used a particular name for fifteen years has enforceable rights in that market whether or not it ever registered. You’ll sometimes see these businesses using the ™ symbol, which signals a trademark claim without federal registration. The ® symbol, by contrast, can only be used with a federally registered mark.
Finding unregistered marks takes broader detective work. Search Google and other search engines for the name in the context of your industry. Check domain name registries, social media platforms, business directories, and industry association listings. Look at state business entity databases, which capture business name filings even when no trademark registration exists. This legwork is tedious but important. A small operator with years of established use in your market can send a cease-and-desist letter and win, whether or not it ever filed with the USPTO.10United States Patent and Trademark Office. I Received a Letter/Email
International Filings
If you have any plans to sell outside the United States, or if foreign companies sell in your market, international registrations matter too. The Madrid Protocol allows trademark holders in one country to extend protection into others through a single filing. International registrations can designate the United States, meaning they show up as pending U.S. applications in the Trademark Center database. WIPO’s Global Brand Database at wipo.int is a free tool for searching international registrations across member countries. Even if you only plan to sell domestically, foreign marks that designate the U.S. can block your application like any domestic filing.
What to Do If You Find a Possible Conflict
A similar existing mark isn’t necessarily the end of the road, but it demands a careful next step. The worst move is to ignore it and file anyway hoping the examiner won’t notice. They will. If the conflicting mark is registered, the USPTO will refuse your application. If it’s in a pending application filed before yours, the USPTO will suspend yours until the earlier one resolves. In either case, you lose the filing fee.
Your realistic options depend on how close the conflict is:
- If the existing mark operates in a genuinely unrelated industry and the two marks aren’t identical, you may have room to proceed, but the likelihood-of-confusion call is a judgment best made with professional help.
- If the goods overlap and the names are similar, consider modifying your proposed mark enough to create real distance. Changing a single letter rarely helps; changing the overall commercial impression sometimes does.
- If the conflict is a Dead registration and the owner appears to have genuinely stopped using the mark, the path may be open, but verify through a common law search before assuming.
- If the situation is unclear, this is where a trademark attorney earns their fee. A professional can assess the strength of the existing mark, the relatedness of the goods, and your realistic odds of registration.
When to Bring in a Professional
Nothing prevents you from running a thorough search yourself, and the tools are all free. There is, however, a meaningful gap between a self-directed search and a professional one. Trademark attorneys and specialized search firms have access to commercial databases that aggregate federal, state, common law, and international filings into a single report, and they know how to read the results. A comprehensive professional search typically costs between $500 and $2,000 depending on complexity and the number of classes involved.
The USPTO itself recommends considering a private trademark attorney for search assistance and also points to free or reduced-cost options through its law school clinic certification program.6United States Patent and Trademark Office. Federal Trademark Searching The investment often makes sense when you weigh it against the cost of rebranding after a cease-and-desist letter or losing a filing fee on a doomed application.
What’s at Stake If You Skip the Search
Skipping the search or ignoring a known conflict can expose you to serious financial liability. A trademark owner who proves infringement can recover the profits you earned using the infringing mark, their own lost profits, and court costs. Courts can award up to three times the actual damages in some cases.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1117 – Recovery for Violation of Rights
For counterfeit marks specifically, the penalties are steeper. A plaintiff can elect statutory damages instead of proving actual losses, with a range of $1,000 to $200,000 per counterfeit mark per type of goods or services. If the court finds the counterfeiting was willful, that ceiling jumps to $2,000,000 per mark.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1117 – Recovery for Violation of Rights Even short of a lawsuit, a cease-and-desist letter from an established brand can force you to rebrand overnight, wasting every dollar you invested in packaging, marketing, signage, and domain names. The search takes an afternoon. The consequences of not searching can take years to resolve.