[E-trademarks] TM Search: Lexical error From Online Help Quotation Search

[Ken Boone]

I encountered an unexpected error with trademark search.  Here's what I did.

>From the online help, I selected Advanced, then Search Fields, then scrolled down to the SA - Status field.  I copied to the clipboard the text provided for that search field, namely the following.

Contains a status such as registered, "published for opposition”, or “new application”

I then pasted the two quoted strings to the search box and performed edits to construct a valid search of those two phrases.  Here's the search I submitted.

SA:("published for opposition”  “new application”) AND LD:true

When submitted, I got the following error message:

Error: Lexical error at line 1, column 63. Encountered: <EOF> after : "\"published for opposition\u201d \u201cnew application\u201d) AND LD:true"

I then simplified the search to two distinct searches, namely

SA:("published for opposition”  ) AND LD:true
SA:( “new application”) AND LD:true

where then first variation with just the "published for opposition” phrase failed with the error

Lexical error at line 1, column 47. Encountered: <EOF> after : "\"published for opposition\u201d ) AND LD:true "

but the second variation with the “new application” phrase successfully completed, returning 395,051 hits.

Notice the difference?  Apparently, the new trademark search system does NOT like mixing the curly quotation characters “ or ” with the standard quotation character " as included the initial search and the first variation, but the second variation with matching curly quotes successfully completed.

Jumping to the USPTO's standard character list, I see the following quote characters (in case anyone found this interesting and is curious enough to try other quotation variations for trademark search, though I may have missed relevant standard characters).

Character
Description
Decimal
"
(double) quotation mark
34
`
grave accent
96
‚
low left rising single quote
130
„
low left rising double quote
132
‹
left single angle quote mark
139
‘
left single quotation mark,
145
’
right single quote mark
146
“
left double quotation mark,
147
”
right double quote mark
148
›
right single angle quote mark
155
«
left (double) angle quote
171
´
spacing acute accent
180
»
right (double) angle quote
187

As for me, I had to try searching SA:(«published for opposition» ) AND LD:true, which succeeded, returning 88,368 hits, but I'm still trying to find useful information in the SA - Status field.  So far, my three more interesting SA - Status search results are

(1) the search (SA:("published for opposition" ) AND LD:true  ) NOT PO:* that returns 2 hits for which TSDR does NOT show the publication date directly on the status page though the prosecution histories display the published for opposition dates (both this past Tuesday); and

(2) the search SA:( “new application”) AND LD:true AND RN:* retrieves 7 active registrations that are still considered to be new applications on trademark search;

(3) the search (SA:( registered ) AND LD:true) NOT RN:* retrieves 3 pending trademarks (no registration number on either TSDR or trademark search);

but my real disappointment is that trademark search does not include a list of all or even the most commonly occurring phrases appearing in the SA - Status field, nor does trademark search display the SA - Status field in the record display, plus searching the phrases occurring on the TSDR status typically fail to retrieve any document in trademark search, basically minimizing any benefits for including the SA - Status search field on trademark search.

Happy Quotation Searching,
Ken Boone

PS - In additional to a Full Record display option (that includes all the fields typically seen on registration certificates plus the SA - status field and UD - update date), trademark search should include a Drawings display option (like the retired TESS system) that displays just the drawing and serial number for multiple records, allowing the quick review of drawings for the search results.
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