Update: Another piece of the trademark search puzzle, available here at the library

Update, 8/25: Trademarkscan was many things to many people, but one thing that it wasn't, at least at the San Francisco Public Library, was popular. I'm sorry to report that TMScan is no longer available at the Patent and Trademark Center. Please get in touch if you're interested in learning about alternative approaches to state TM searching.

Original post:
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A proper trademark search can be quite a puzzle, particularly because there is no one central place to find the information. Though there is a Federal trademark registry that's pretty easy to work with, the USPTO does not have a monopoly on trademark registrations. As I've mentioned in a previous post (and as I'm realizing I should write about in more depth in the future), a mark doesn't necessarily have to be registered with the USPTO to be enforceable. Remember, the purpose of a trademark is to help consumers identify products and services. It follows, then, that a longstanding mark associated with a particular enterprise may have some protection, regardless of registration status.

What's best for consumers isn't necessarily good for trademark searchers, however. To research a mark that's intended for use across the country, a Federal trademark search is a good start, but there are a couple of other elements that a completist searcher will want to consult. The first, a common law trademark search, can be done using a few resources that the Business, Science, and Technology department here at the library has. You can read about that here.

Another component of the search process is finding marks registered in individual states. Many businesses only operate within a particular state, and in those cases, registration within that state may be sufficient. A trademark registration in a particular state may interfere with use of the mark within that state, so it's wise to check state trademark registries as part of a trademark search. You can check each state individually -- to search California trademarks, for instance, visit the Secretary of State's website -- but, for those able to come into the library, we have a tool that allows one-stop shopping for state trademark registrations. It's called Trademarkscan, and it's a for-pay database that you can use for free at the library. Using Trademarkscan, you can perform a search across all fifty states of registered trademarks. If you have a mark that you think that you may want to use in several states, this could be a real timesaver for you.