How it works

Two things live here. A free trademark and domain check, and a small number of names we hold ourselves. This page explains what each one rests on.

The check

Where the data comes from

USPTO publishes every US federal trademark as bulk XML. We keep a local copy of 4.8 million live marks and refresh it daily. Your search runs against that index, which is why it answers in a second or two.

That matters because the government’s own search, TESS, was retired, and its replacement has no public API. Most of the paid services that fill the gap are reselling the same bulk records anybody can download.

Both registries at once

The check answers two separate questions together: whether the name is registered as a US trademark, and whether the .com is taken. Neither implies the other. A name can be trademarked with the domain free, or the domain gone with no mark anywhere, and you need both answers before you commit to a name.

What a near match means, and usually does not

Almost every short name has one. There are around 320,000 live six-letter marks, so a string one letter from yours very likely exists somewhere. What matters is the class, so the check names it: a mark in floor coverings is not a conflict for a software company, and the same mark in your own industry usually is.

The names we hold

A few dozen names, each one researched before it was bought. There is more on why the list is short over on Why us.

What every listing carries

A domain listing elsewhere gives you a name and a price. Ours gives you the evidence behind it, because that is what you need in order to decide:

• Whether anyone built on it before. The year a site first appeared and how many times the Internet Archive came back to crawl it.
• The nearest trademark, with its class, owner and serial number. Not a reassurance, the actual record, so you can look it up yourself.
• What the name means. Checked against thirteen language corpora, Latin and Greek combining forms, and a web search. Several of these names turn out to be ordinary words somewhere.
• What ranks for it on Google today. You inherit those results along with the domain, and an empty first page is worth more than a crowded one.

We tell you the problems too

One of these names shares its exact spelling with a registered trademark. Another shares its first page with a Japanese labour foundation that has held the name since 1989. A third is already in use by a consultancy in Minneapolis. All three say so on their own listing.

A marketplace where nothing ever has a conflict is one nobody should believe. Those disclosures are what make the clean listings worth something.

No listed prices

Naming a number first caps what you might have offered, and the same .com has sold for wildly different amounts depending on who wanted it. So there is no price. Say what it is worth to you and what you would build, and you will get a reply.

Why the check is free

Because choosing the wrong name is expensive and finding out late is worse. People build a brand, print the signage, file the paperwork, and then discover somebody registered the mark years ago or that the .com was never available.

We would rather that did not happen, and it costs you nothing to find out here. If the name is clear, register it wherever you like. The check gives you the same answer either way.