Thread by @TimberlakeLaw

let's say we wanted to search TESS for word marks that could be considered similar to IGUANA, we could start by truncating the i at the beginning with an asterisk which takes the place of zero or more continuous characters (since it's hard to trust initial vowels)

while we're at it we can throw an asterisk on the end too since final letters are often literally the last things to differentiate marks

next we should look skeptically at the letter a which, as a vowel, basically can't be trusted not to switch places with almost any other vowel, we can attempt to cope with this problem by employing our class operator for vowels:

{v}

next we'll notice, if we say iguana out loud, that the g and the u are working together to make a gw sound, so let's add that in our search

since people keep telling us our searches are basic, let's specify the basic index:

[bi]

more on this:

tmsearch.uspto.gov/webaka/html/he…

now that we know the doctrine of foreign equivalents is a thing we should get the translation index in there as well:

[ti]
tmep.uspto.gov/RDMS/TMEP/curr…

tmsearch.uspto.gov/webaka/html/he…

finally since we're fancy we'll rephrase our query more elegantly in a form we can simply copy and paste into a TESS free form search:

(*gu{v}n* or *gw{v}n*)[bi,ti]

the steps in our reasoning for constructing a TESS search for word marks that could be considered similar to

IGUANA

#trademarks