Search query syntax
A query without operators runs the relevance ladder: exact mark, phrase, fuzzy words, prefix, sounds-alike, similar meaning, then owner and goods mentions. A query with an operator turns that ladder off and searches the mark wording alone, exactly as written — a searcher typing a wildcard wants exact control, not recall.
| Type | Finds | Note |
|---|---|---|
LUMEN* | a word in the mark starting with LUMEN | * = any characters, at the start of the mark or of any word in it |
LUM?N | a word matching L-U-M-any-N | ? = exactly one character |
"coffee house" | the adjacent words, in order | quotes alone keep the relevance ladder; they only turn off fuzzy, sounds-alike and similar-meaning recall for the phrase |
"coffee house"~3 | the words within three positions of each other | proximity; capped at 20 |
apple OR pear | either word | OR must be upper case — "salt or pepper" is a three-word mark |
apple juice OR cider | apple AND (juice OR cider) | OR binds tighter than the implicit AND |
apple NOT juice / apple -juice | apple, but not juice | a hyphen inside a word (COCA-COLA) is never an operator |
Case and accents do not matter (CAFÉ* finds cafe…). Wildcards run against both the whole mark and its words, so LUMEN* finds LUMENARIS and BLUE LUMENS alike. Owner names and goods are not searched by operator queries — use the advanced panel's fields for those. Nothing is an error: a dangling OR, a bare * or an unbalanced quote degrades to the nearest sensible reading rather than an empty page.
Advanced criteria
- Design code — a prefix over the USPTO design search codes:
0301finds every0301xx(dots and spaces are ignored). - Pseudo mark — contains, case-insensitive, over the record's pseudo-mark statement (how the USPTO reads KWIK: "QUICK").
- Sort — registration date (newest or oldest) joins filing date, status date and mark.
Both engines honour the same parse: Elasticsearch builds wildcard, phrase and exclusion clauses on the mark field; when search falls back to the database the same query runs as anchored pattern matches (proximity is approximated there).