Walkthrough

Welcome! We think you will find our services really easy to use, but this brief walkthrough will help get you up and running.

Creating Your Search

After logging in, you'll see the search screen. This is where you run new searches.

Under "Mark", enter the mark you want to search.

Under "Goods and Services", start typing a product or service. The most common goods and services on the USPTO registry are auto-suggested for you - you'll get the best results from picking the most common terms that accurately describe your client's product or service. Select (by clicking on or hovering over and hitting return) the relevant goods or services. You can add as few or as many as you like. Even if your client only has one product, we suggest using at least 2-3 similar terms for the best coverage.

Here is the goods and services auto-suggester in action:

Here is what it looks like after you have selected goods and services:

If your search does not run, you may have just typed a product but not "selected" it from the goods and services auto-suggested. Select the good, so it shows up in your list, as "lemonade" and "limoncello" do in the example.

There are three "modifier" tabs under Goods and Services that you can pick from. "General" is the standard - the good or service you enter is the starting point for our analysis. "Retail" searches, by default, both retail services featuring the product you entered and for the product itself as a "general" search". For "software" searches, focus on the function of the software or its industry. The ID you pick can include software (or synonyms) but does not need to - the service will handle that, and will automatically focus on both locally installed software and online/hosted software. By default, the criteria will aso extend to the product or service you enter as a "general" service. So, searching for "accounting services" with the "software" tab will generate starting search strings for (software) accounting services and (general) accounting services (suggested for best results).

Click "Knockout Search" and the service will execute an extensive search strategy and statistically sort and analyze the results.

Reviewing Search Results

In just seconds, you will be presented with your results. The report is divided into several sections: a summary of the search with navigation elements, a scatterplot showing potential likelihood of confusion risks, a bar graph showing the distinctiveness and strength of the mark and its component parts, and a table with full details on at least the 100 most relevant marks identified in the search (if there are that many).

Here is our sample search.

Let's start with the bar graph:

The blue bars, to the left, show the weakness of each term in mark. Mouse over any bar to see the key risk factors that went in to assigning this weight - the more we show our work, the more you can trust our results. Here, as you would expect, "search" grades out as very weak for employment placement services, and "sample" was a bit more distinctive.

The gray bars, to the right, show the functional strength of a term in a mark. Marks that are more similar to terms that have more gray will grade out as more similar than marks that are similar to terms with less gray. This lets you know that, for example, in a search for "ABC Law" for legal services, the service will focus more on results similar to the stronger "ABC" than the weaker "Law." In the pictured example, the gray bars are just the mirror image of the blue ones. But, if a term that is inherently somewhat weaker is split - like "blueberry" into "blue" and "berry" - then the "origin" term provides a ceiling on the strength of its children. So, neither "blue" nor "berry" will score out as more distinctive than "blueberry" from which they were derived.

The scatterplot shows you the results for similar marks and its sophisticated statistical analysis. Here is an example:

Applications or registrations containing more-similar marks are towards the top; those with more-similar goods and services are towards the right. So, a prior application or registration for the same mark and same goods would be in the very upper-right corner. In general, the marks that deserve the most attention are in the upper-right quadrant or are highly similar but for less-related goods (anywhere at the very top).

Registrations are shown as circles and pending applications are triangles. Common owners show up in a single color, so you can tell at a glance if you're facing a crowded field or just a single owner with lots of similar marks. You can also mouse over any point on the chart for core details - the mark, the owner, current status, and an excerpt of the most-similar goods and services.

Last but not least is a table with full details on the 100 most relevant marks in the search, sorted by relevance. We even highlight the most-similar products or services for you - you won't have to puzzle through a 5-page 44e or 66a filing to identify the key goods. Here is an example:

If you want to do a deeper dive on the prosecution history of a mark in the report, just click the link on the serial number to go its full TSDR record.

Common Law Results

Click on the "Common Law" link to jump down to that section of your report. You will see results sourced from Google that are broken down by class, plus (where relevant) specialized tables for app store, pharmaceutical, or other specialized sets of search results. Click "View All" to dive deeper or customize the common law results.

To create a static record of the final search report, just click "print" or use your usual print keyboard shortcut.

Thanks for choosing TM TKO. Please e-mail support@tmtko.com with any questions.