The proprietary MarkAssure® AI engine “MA.AI” uses multiple search condition technologies that search for similar marks. Remember, results are not guaranteed be exhaustive. The MarkAssure® service is a service of prudence, but not a service of perfection. We encourage you to search www.USPTO.gov for similar marks. Graphic marks, even if containing words, are excluded from the MarkAssure® service and search results.
That said, your search results identify a search type, in the order of importance, using some very sophisticated search technologies:
- EXACT: This means that MarkAssure® MA.AI found a mark that appears exactly like yours, or at least substantially similar. The MarkAssure® MA.AI technology “stabilizes” the marks to some degree, such as by removing “And” and certain punctuation.
- ANDWords: This means that MarkAssure® MA.AI found another mark that has a combination of words similar to your mark.
- LIKE: This means that MarkAssure® MA.AI discovered a mark that is like the searched mark. This is a different technology than the Soundex technology.
- ORWords: This means that MarkAssure® MA.AI found a mark that has at least one search word similar to your mark.
- PHRASING: This means that MarkAssure® MA.AI found the mark or a portion as a phrase in another mark.
- SOUND LIKE: Like ANDWords, this means that a word was matched in a variation of the mark itself. In other search result codes, this is added as -SL.
- SOUNDEX: This is a “sounds like” technology, meaning the MarkAssure® MA.AI technology thinks your mark and the found mark sound alike. This is often less relevant for long marks, but can be valuable for single word marks. This MarkAssure® MA.AI tends to disregard spelling errors. If there is a number appended to the SoundEx indicator, it represents a number from 0 to 4, with 0 indicating the greatest distinction of comparison and 4 indicating the least distinction between the compared marks.
If there is “Alt” after the search type, that means that there is alternate lettering used.
If “Cleaned” is indicated it means that some portion of the compared marks were altered by MarkAssure® MA.AI in some regard, such as for invalid or unusual characters that might otherwise cause the technology to miss the result.
If there is “Ex” in the Search Type, that means that the MarkAssure® MA.AI search technology located the mark on an EXtended search variation, such as a direct change of the first letter from, for example, “PH” from “F”; this is different from sound-alike technology, since it is a letter-for-letter replacement technology on the introductory lettering.
If there is “Phrase” after the search type, that means the result has a higher priority based upon a special unaltered phrase added to the search criteria, often used for marks that contain numbers to ensure the number is not re-formed in some way by the search technologies.
If there is “Term“ after the search type, that means that the search had a special descriptive word keyword found in the description of goods or services.
