Knockout Search: Check Trademark Availability Before Filing

Before filing a trademark, you need to know if conflicting marks already exist. GleanMark's Knockout Search runs the same multi-step analysis a USPTO examining attorney would — phonetic matching, visual similarity, coordinated class checks, and foreign equivalents — and returns risk-scored results in seconds.

What You Can Do

• Check a proposed mark against all live federal trademarks (every active pending and registered mark)
• See conflicts grouped by risk level (High, Medium, Low) with a summary verdict
• Understand exactly how each conflict was found (phonetic, visual, semantic, etc.)
• Save searches and revisit them from the Analysis Hub
• Copy a link to your search results to share with colleagues
• Run a full Clearance Report for attorney-grade analysis

How It Works

1. Sign in and navigate to Knockout — Click "Knockout" under the Search menu in the sidebar. Knockout requires an account — new users can start at /knockout-search to learn about the feature first.
2. Enter your proposed mark — Type the trademark name in the "Enter Your Proposed Mark" field
3. Select Nice classes — Use the class picker to choose the international classes your goods or services fall under. This focuses the search on commercially relevant conflicts.
4. Add a goods description (optional) — Describe your goods or services in plain language. This helps GleanMark suggest relevant Nice classes for your search.
5. Click "Run Knockout Search" — The search runs multiple examiner-style strategies and returns results once complete.
6. Review the verdict — The Risk Assessment Summary shows one of three outcomes: High Risk Conflicts Found (significant conflicts detected), Medium Risk Conflicts Found (moderate conflicts worth investigating), or No Significant Conflicts (no meaningful conflicts found)
7. Examine individual conflicts — Results are grouped into High, Medium, and Low risk sections. Each result shows the conflicting mark name, owner, registration status, Nice classes, how it was discovered (discovery method badges), and a risk level.

Examiner-Style Search Methods

Knockout Search doesn't just run a text match. It applies multiple examiner-style search strategies, the same approaches a USPTO examining attorney uses when reviewing applications:

• Exact Match — Direct word-for-word match against the full trademark database
• Phonetic (Double Metaphone) — Finds marks that sound alike, even if spelled differently. "FONE" matches "PHONE", "KOOL" matches "COOL"
• Consonant Skeleton — Strips vowels to find structural similarities. "STRIPES" matches "STRIPS"
• Trigram (Visual Similarity) — Character-level comparison catches marks that look alike on paper
• Component Intersection — Breaks multi-word marks into parts and checks if all words appear in existing marks
• Component + Coordinated Classes — Checks individual words against marks in the same or related product/service classes
• Component Phonetic — Runs phonetic matching on each individual word in a multi-word mark
• Design Code — Searches design codes for marks with logos or stylized elements
• Foreign Equivalents — Applies the Doctrine of Foreign Equivalents — if your mark contains a foreign word, it finds English translations and vice versa

The number of steps that run depends on the mark. Simple single-word marks may skip component-based steps, while multi-word marks with foreign elements run the full suite.

Understanding Risk Levels

Each conflict receives a risk level based on a confusion score that combines mark similarity and commercial overlap:

Risk Level	What It Means
High	Significant conflict. Strongly consider a different mark or consult an attorney.
Medium	Moderate similarity. Review the specific goods/services overlap carefully.
Low	Minimal concern. Mark differences or class distance reduce risk.

The summary counts how many conflicts fall into each level. Very high similarity marks (near-identical spelling) are always flagged as High risk regardless of class distance.

Tips & Best Practices

• Always specify Nice classes — Without them, the search can't assess commercial overlap, and every phonetically similar mark looks like a conflict
• Try variations — If your proposed mark is "BluePeak", also search "Blue Peak" (two words) and "BLUEPEAK" (one word)
• Check the discovery method badges — Each result shows how it was found. A mark found by multiple methods (phonetic + trigram + component) is a stronger conflict than one found by a single method
• Use "Run Clearance Search" for important filings — Knockout gives the quick pass/fail. A Clearance Report adds domain availability, web presence, DuPont analysis, and a formal recommendation

What's Included in Each Plan

Feature	Starter	Professional	Max
Knockout searches	5/month	25/seat/month	Unlimited
All search methods	Yes	Yes	Yes
Save searches	Yes	Yes	Yes
Clearance Reports	Per report	Per report	5/seat/month, then per report

Knockout Search itself is metered as shown above. A full Clearance Report is a separate, paid upgrade on every plan — Max includes a monthly allotment per seat, and additional reports (or any report on Starter and Professional) are billed individually. See the Billing page for current per-report pricing.

Related Features

• Markus AI — Ask Markus to run a knockout search conversationally
• Setting Up Alerts — Monitor for new filings that conflict with your marks after you've filed