Knockout Search: Check Trademark Availability Before Filing

Knockout Search mirrors a USPTO examiner's X-Search workflow — phonetic variations, visual similarity, and foreign equivalents — applied to all live federal marks. It is the fast first pass: run it before you commit to a name, then move to a full Clearance Report when the results look promising.

Open it at /knockout. There is also a public overview at /knockout-search you can read before signing in.

What You Can Do

• Score a proposed mark against every live federal trademark in seconds
• See conflicts grouped by risk level, highest first
• Filter by risk, match method, class, status, type, owner, and goods/services overlap
• Read exactly which search step surfaced each conflict
• Triage the list yourself and record your own rating on any mark
• Compare two to four marks side by side
• Export the whole thing as PDF, Word, or Excel

Running a Search

1. Enter Your Proposed Mark — the only required field. Type the name you want to clear and press Enter, or click Run Knockout Search.
2. Describe Your Goods or Services — optional, but it matters. The more descriptive and accurate your goods and services, the better the conflict scoring: a full recitation ranks related marks far better than a couple of words.
3. Select Nice Classes — recommended. Pick up to 10. If you have written 50 or more characters of goods and services, click Suggest Classes and GleanMark proposes classes from your description.
4. Applicant Context — optional. Open this panel to name the applicant (so their existing marks are identified in the results), list serial numbers to exclude, or list domains you already own so they are not treated as common-law conflicts.

Searches usually finish quickly, but can take up to 60 seconds.

Understanding Risk Levels

Every conflict is placed in one of four bands, and results are grouped by band with the most important threats first.

Risk	What it means
Very High	Closest matches on the register. Treat these as blockers until you have a reason not to.
High	Strong similarity worth a considered response before you file.
Medium	Real but arguable. Worth reading, often survivable.
Low	Background noise from the register — listed for completeness.

The All Marks tab counts Very High and High only, so the number on the tab is the size of your real problem, not the size of the result set.

You can record your own view on any mark using the counsel rating control: Very High, High, Medium, Low, or Dismiss (not a risk). Your rating carries into the exported report.

How Marks Are Matched

Results are labeled with the method that found them, and you can filter on any of these:

Match method	Finds
Exact Match	The identical mark
Sounds similar	Phonetic matches — marks an examiner would hear as the same
Looks similar	Visually similar spellings
Common element	Marks sharing a dominant word or component
Foreign equivalent	Translations covered by the doctrine of foreign equivalents
Similar meaning	Conceptually similar marks
Pseudo-Mark	The USPTO's own normalized spelling of a stylized mark
Design Code	Marks sharing a design element

The How We Searched tab lists every step the engine ran, in order, with a plain-English description of each — exact match, near-exact variants, phonetic, consonant structure, visual similarity, shared words, coordinated class expansion, foreign translation, and more. That is the audit trail you would want behind a clearance opinion.

Working Through the Results

• Tabs: All Marks, Top Owners, Dead Marks, G&S Overlap, Crowded Field, How We Searched. On a narrow screen the middle three collapse into a More menu.
• Sort: Risk (highest first), Risk (lowest first), Filing date (newest), Filing date (oldest), or Mark name (A-Z).
• Refine — search within your results by name, owner, or goods and services.
• Triage — mark a result Concerning, Maybe, or Dismiss. Dismissed marks are hidden; click Show dismissed to bring them back.
• Compare — select 2 to 4 marks and click Compare for a side-by-side view.

Press ? for the keyboard shortcuts. J and K move through the list, C marks Concerning, M marks Maybe, D dismisses, U undoes a rating, and Enter opens the mark.

Exporting

Use the export button in the header for Export as PDF, Export as Word (.docx), or Export as Excel (.xlsx).

The report carries the clearance assessment and summary, the conflict summary, top owners, dead marks, crowded-field analysis, coexistence on the register, refusal history, marks with similar goods and services, an appendix of low-risk marks, and the full search methodology including every examiner search step and the class coverage. The Excel workbook splits the same material across sheets.

What's Included in Each Plan

Plan	Knockout searches
Free	—
Starter	5 per user per month
Professional	25 per user per month
Max	Unlimited

During a trial you get 25 knockout searches for the whole trial period rather than a monthly allowance.

When you reach your allowance the page tells you when it resets and offers a larger plan. Search itself is always free and unlimited — it is the knockout run that is metered.

Knockout Search vs Clearance Report

Knockout Search is the fast pass over the federal register. A Clearance Report adds domain availability, web presence and common-law signals, and a GREEN / YELLOW / RED recommendation for the client file. Run knockout first; upgrade to clearance when the name is worth the deeper look.

Related Features

• Running a Clearance Report — the full analysis
• GleanMark Plans & Features — what each plan includes