[E-trademarks] Regex search

Sun Mar 17 11:56:52 EDT 2024

For one thing, it means that whenever you do a search you have to make a 
decision about whether to use the Advanced syntax or the regex syntax. 
And it appears there are situations where you /must/ use one or the 
other, such as my t-shirt example, which means you have to be highly 
skilled with both. Case in point - use of capitals:

Id    Query      ResultCount
1    GS2:DVD      98307
2    GS2:/DVD/   0
3    GS2:/dvd/    98307

If you don't remember that the search string in regex must be lowercase, 
and enter the term as it actually appears in the ID, you may have just 
screwed the pooch. It's just an invitation to disaster because unless 
you are a master of both you won't realize that your query was malformed.

I also mentioned that I haven't found a way to do a proximity search in 
regex. But you can only do pattern matching in regex.  So to pattern 
match on a two-word unitary phrase, I guess you have to include two 
different searches, e.g., /CM:("tick tock") AND CM:(/ti[ckqx]/) AND 
CM:(/to[ckqx]/)/ to find the homonyms for "tick tock"?

There are so many examples of unreliable queries - forgetting a colon 
after the field tag, or failing to use all caps for connectors, also 
give you some results and you may not realize they are unreliable. I 
have submitted a request that a malformed query be flagged. It might not 
be possible with the t-shirt example, but it should be possible to at 
least identify syntactical errors.

Pam

Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
300 Fayetteville Street
Unit 2492
Raleigh, NC 27602
+1 919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal.com
www.chesteklegal.com

On 3/16/2024 11:44 AM, Sam Castree via E-trademarks wrote:
> Just curious, but is there a reason why that particular search would 
> need to use regex at all? Maybe I'm way off (I definitely don't claim 
> to have mastered this system yet), but it seems like a..."normal" 
> expert search would work just fine.  GS:"baby bonnet" or whatever.
>
> Cheers,
> Sam Castree, III
>
> /Sam Castree Law, LLC/
> /3421 W. Elm St./
> /McHenry, IL 60050/
> /(815) 344-6300/
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 7:56 PM Pamela Chestek via E-trademarks 
> <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com> wrote:
>
>     Indeed, and the help materials couldn't be more terse and the
>     information more difficult to find, other than not to exist at all. I
>     have yet to figure out how (if possible) to search for a two-word
>     expression, like "baby bonnet,"  using regex.
>
>     Id    Query    ResultCount
>     3    GS2:(/baby/ AND /bonnet/)    2484
>     2    GS2:/baby bonnet/    0
>     1    GS2:"baby bonnet"    43
>
>     So you're left with trying to remember two similar, but not
>     identical,
>     search systems, including how they treat quotation marks, reserved
>     characters, capitalization, etc.
>
>     Pam
>
>     Pamela S. Chestek
>     Chestek Legal
>     300 Fayetteville Street
>     Unit 2492
>     Raleigh, NC 27602
>     +1 919-800-8033
>     pamela at chesteklegal.com
>     www.chesteklegal.com <http://www.chesteklegal.com>
>
>     On 3/15/2024 8:40 PM, Richard Schafer via E-trademarks wrote:
>     > The fact that we have to make guesses about how the indexes work
>     shows how poorly the PTO has implemented and documented this
>     system. I wonder if examining attorneys have the same poor
>     explanation about how the indexes work. If they do, that's really
>     bad. If they have a fuller explanation, what possible reason would
>     the PTO have for not making that explanation public?
>     >
>     > Best regards,
>     > Richard A. Schafer | Schafer IP Law
>     > P.O. Box 230081 | Houston, TX 77223
>     > M: 832.283.6564 | richard at schafer-ip.com
>     >
>     > -----Original Message-----
>     > From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On
>     Behalf Of Neil R. Ormos via E-trademarks
>     > Sent: Friday, March 15, 2024 6:19 PM
>     > To: E-trademarks Mailing List <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
>     > Cc: Neil R. Ormos <ormos-lists at ormos.org>
>     > Subject: Re: [E-trademarks] Regex search
>     >
>     > Pamela Chestek via E-trademarks wrote:
>     >
>     >> Can anyone explain to me why the first two search queries
>     didn't give
>     >> me the same results as the third query? I was in expert mode.
>     >
>     >> GS:/t\-shirt/    0
>     >> GS:/t[-]shirt/    0
>     >> GS:t-shirt    511200
>     > When the GS index is used with a regular expression search, the
>     index appears to contain each of the words of the goods and
>     services field in isolation.  Spaces and hyphens separate words,
>     but some other punctuation does not.  Your regexps do not match
>     because t-shirt does not appear as a single word in the index.
>     >
>     > The GS index behaves differently when used with other types of
>     search.
>     >
>     >   
>     <https://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/2024-January/000554.html>
>     >
>     > And the GS2 index also behaves differently.
>     >
>     > GS2:/t[-]shirt/
>     >
>     > returns 61,341 records.
>     >
>     > I know GS2 does some sort of stemming, but I haven't been able
>     to synthesize a complete explanation.  If someone has GS2 figured
>     it out, or knows of a document that describes its behavior, I hope
>     they will explain.
>     >
>     >
>     > --
>     > E-trademarks mailing list
>     > E-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com
>     >
>     http://oppedahl-lists.com/mailman/listinfo/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com
>     >
>
>
>     -- 
>     E-trademarks mailing list
>     E-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com
>     http://oppedahl-lists.com/mailman/listinfo/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/attachments/20240317/1d332576/attachment.htm>