TESS Is Gone: How to Search Trademarks Now

If you searched for a trademark a few years ago and bookmarked the tool you used, there's a good chance that bookmark is dead. TESS — the Trademark Electronic Search System, the USPTO's search tool for two decades — was retired in November 2023. If you're still looking for it, here's what happened and where to search instead.

What TESS was

TESS was the USPTO's original web-based system for searching the federal trademark register, in service since the early 2000s. It was functional but dated: a clunky interface, limited filtering, and a search syntax that took real effort to learn well. Generations of trademark attorneys and paralegals learned to work around its quirks because, for a long time, it was the only official option.

What replaced it

The USPTO replaced TESS with a new tool simply called Trademark Search, available at tmsearch.uspto.gov. It's built on more modern infrastructure, with a cleaner interface, better filtering by status, class, filing date and owner, and search behavior that's generally more forgiving of how people naturally type queries. If you land on an old TESS URL today, you'll typically be redirected — but plenty of outdated guides, bookmarks and forum posts still reference the old system by name, which is why "TESS trademark search" remains a common search query even years after the retirement.

Why the retirement is actually good news

• Better structured data made available through modern USPTO systems and APIs, which is part of what makes tools like Brandmity's search possible.
• More usable filtering — by live/dead status, class, and filing basis — without needing to memorize a query syntax.
• A refreshed interface that's noticeably faster to search and easier to read results from, especially for non-lawyers doing their own first-pass clearance check.

Where to search trademarks today

You have two broad options, and they're not mutually exclusive:

1. The USPTO's own Trademark Search at tmsearch.uspto.gov — the authoritative, official source, free to use, and the tool an examining attorney will effectively be checking against.
2. A third-party clearance tool, like Brandmity, that sits on top of the same underlying USPTO data but adds plain-English risk reads, class suggestions, and monitoring — things the official tool doesn't do, because it's a search index, not a clearance advisor.

Neither replaces the other. The official USPTO tool is the ground truth. A clearance-focused tool is useful for turning that raw data into a decision you can actually act on quickly, especially if you're not fluent in reading trademark records.

A quick note on search quality

Whichever tool you use, the retirement of TESS didn't change the underlying discipline of a good search: check exact matches, check phonetic and spelling variants, filter to your relevant classes, and check status (live vs. dead) before drawing conclusions. Our full guide to doing a trademark search walks through that process regardless of which tool sits underneath it.