TESS or Trademark Electronic Search System is a free trademark search that can be done online.

It is the United States Patent and Trade Office itself which offers this service. Next to your trademark and product description searches, you are supposed to use the TESS service which allows you to search the database of trademarks that are similar or the same as your trademark.

Here, you will use the same types of strategies to search for trademark conflicts as the examining attorney will.

But you need to be very careful in this search. Even if your proposed trademark doesn’t rise up in the TESS system, don’t think it as a green signal to proceed. There is yet another possibility for the rejection of your trademark. It happens when you are selling the same type of product that another company is and your trademark is just another name for theirs. This is considered as a sort of similarity and so the application will be rejected.

Even the TESS system is not supposed to show up to you such problems. This means that even after these searches, you are not destined to get your trademark Okayed!

Confused? The only way to know for sure if your trademark will be registered is with a trademark attorney.