[E-trademarks] Regex search

Carl Oppedahl carl at oppedahl.com
Mon Mar 18 03:31:07 EDT 2024


What she said.

On 3/17/2024 9:56 AM, Pamela Chestek via E-trademarks wrote:
> 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.
>>     >
>>     >
>>     > --
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>>     > E-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com
>>     >
>>     http://oppedahl-lists.com/mailman/listinfo/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com
>>     >
>>
>>
>>     -- 
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>>
>
>
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