Trademark Watch: USPTO New Filings & Similar Mark Alerts

Find out when someone files or publishes a U.S. trademark that looks or sounds like yours, early enough to oppose it. Give it your marks (and, if you like, Nice classes). It searches the official USPTO trademark register for new applications or marks published for opposition, scores every candidate against your mark with fuzzy, phonetic and pseudo-mark similarity, and returns only the close ones. Each one comes with its owner, classes, goods and services, status, opposition deadline and links to the official record.

• 💸 $10 per 1,000 matches ($9 on Starter, $8 on Scale and above). No start fee, no monthly rental. Candidates below your threshold, your own filings, filings already delivered, no-match rows and errors are free.
• 🔔 Built to run on a schedule: since-last-run mode remembers what it already delivered, so each filing is reported and charged once. An optional Slack / Discord / Teams / Zapier webhook alerts you only when something new turns up.
• 🧠 Similarity a trademark examiner would recognise: identical, look-alike (edit distance + Jaro-Winkler), sound-alike (phonetic key: NYKE≈NIKE, KWIK≈QUICK, XEROX≈ZEROX), contains-your-mark (PVQUICK), shared dominant word (SOL GLOW), and USPTO's own pseudo-mark readings (KWIK TENT → "QUICK TENT"). Each row has a 0–100 score, a match type and plain-English reasons.
• ⚖️ Opposition-ready: watch by filing date (the earliest warning) or by publication for opposition, including publications USPTO has already scheduled in the coming weeks. You get the publication date, the 30-day deadline, the days left, and whether the window is open now.
• 🎯 Low noise: Nice-class filter (global or per mark: "Starbucks | 30, 43"), live marks only, exclude your own company, a risk level (high / medium / low) that combines score and class overlap, and one row per filing even when it matches several of your marks.
• 🏢 Owner watch: also list competitors in owners to get every new filing by those companies.
• 🔓 No API key, no login, no proxy. It uses the public USPTO Trademark Search service, politely rate-limited.

Who it's for

• Brand owners and founders: a weekly watch on your own marks instead of a $300+/year watch service.
• Trademark attorneys and IP agencies: one saved task per client (stateKey per client), with opposition deadlines for the docket.
• Clearance before filing: "watchFor": "all-dates" runs a quick knockout search for a new name across the live register.
• E-commerce sellers: catch look-alike filings in your product classes before they register (and before Amazon Brand Registry trouble).
• AI agents and automations: structured JSON with a stable schema, one call per watch list (MCP-friendly).

Input examples

Weekly watch on your marks (the typical schedule):

{
  "marks": ["Starbucks | 30, 43", "Frappuccino"],
  "watchFor": "new-filings-and-publications",
  "sinceLastRun": true,
  "excludeOwners": ["Starbucks Corporation"]
}

Everything published for opposition in your classes over the next 60 days:

{ "marks": ["Glow"], "niceClasses": ["3", "5"], "watchFor": "published-for-opposition", "lookbackDays": 7, "lookaheadDays": 60 }

Competitor filings, plus a Slack alert:

{ "owners": ["Nike, Inc.", "Lululemon"], "lookbackDays": 30, "notifyWebhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/…" }

Clearance / knockout search for a new name (all dates, strict):

{ "marks": ["Zentrova | 9, 42"], "watchFor": "all-dates", "minSimilarity": 85, "maxResults": 50 }

Field	What it does	Default
marks	Your marks, one per line. Optional classes per mark: `Mark	25, 35orMark [25]`. Up to 500 marks per run.
watchFor	new-filings (filing date), published-for-opposition (Official Gazette date), new-filings-and-publications (both), or all-dates (knockout search).	new-filings
niceClasses	Only filings in these classes (1–45). Per-mark classes override it.	all
lookbackDays / dateFrom / dateTo	Date window. Explicit dates win over lookback.	7 days
lookaheadDays	Include scheduled publications up to N days ahead.	60
sinceLastRun	Deliver (and charge) each filing only once across scheduled runs. State is kept in a named key-value store (trademark-watch-state) and is pruned after 180 days.	off
minSimilarity	50–100. 80 is a good balance; 90+ is near-identical only; 70 is a wide net.	80
owners / excludeOwners	Watch every filing by a company / ignore your own filings.	–
liveOnly	Skip dead (abandoned, cancelled) marks.	on
maxResults / maxResultsPerTerm	Caps on saved (charged) rows, best-ranked first.	1000 / none
maxCandidatesPerTerm	How many USPTO candidates are scored per mark (20–2000).	300
notifyWebhookUrl	https webhook for a short alert when there are new matches.	–
jurisdictions	US today (see roadmap).	["US"]

Output

One dataset row per matching filing ("type": "match" or "owner-filing", charged), plus one free "no-match" row per watched term with nothing new, so your list always reconciles.

{
  "type": "match",
  "watchedTerm": "Kwik",
  "similarityScore": 90,
  "matchType": "shared-word-pseudo-mark",
  "matchReasons": ["shared-word (via pseudo-mark \"KWIK SWAP\")", "contains-your-mark"],
  "riskLevel": "high",
  "classOverlap": [],
  "serialNumber": "99862674",
  "mark": "KWIKSWAP",
  "markPseudoText": ["QUICK SWAP", "KWIK SWAP"],
  "markDrawingType": "Standard character mark",
  "markImageUrl": "https://tsdr.uspto.gov/img/99862674/large",
  "niceClasses": [35],
  "goodsAndServices": [{ "niceClass": 35, "description": "Advertising and marketing; …" }],
  "filingDate": "2026-06-03",
  "filingBasis": ["Intent to use (Section 1(b))"],
  "status": "PUBLICATION/ISSUE REVIEW COMPLETE",
  "live": true,
  "publishedForOppositionDate": "2026-11-10",
  "oppositionDeadline": "2026-12-10",
  "daysUntilOppositionDeadline": 44,
  "oppositionWindowOpen": false,
  "owner": "GUANGDONG TUOBITUO TECHNOLOGY CORP., LTD",
  "ownerCitizenship": "China",
  "ownerAddress": "NO.4 KNIVES & SCISSORS DISPLAYING PARK, …, CHINA",
  "attorney": "Manali Shah",
  "sourceUrl": "https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=99862674&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch",
  "documentsUrl": "https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn99862674"
}

Rows are sorted by risk, then score, then date. The dataset has Overview, Opposition deadlines and Goods & services views. The key-value store OUTPUT record has the windows searched, per-term counts (candidates, matches, already delivered, own filings excluded), notes, any unprocessed terms, and the webhook result.

How the score works (watching NIKE, QUICK, GLOW)

Match type	Example	Typical score
identical	N.I.K.E, ChapterSoft vs CHAPTER SOFT	100
identical via USPTO pseudo-mark	QUIX (USPTO reads it as "QUICK")	97
sound-alike	NYKE, NIKA, ZEROX vs XEROX, KWIK vs QUICK	85–92
contains-your-mark	PVQUICK, HEREWEGLOW BEAUTY	82–94
shared-word	SOL GLOW, NIKE AIR	82–90
look-alike	GOOGEL, SPOTIFLY	80–90
below default threshold	HIKE, LIKE, STARBURST, ROLLS vs ROLEX	< 80 (free, not returned)

Risk level: high = score ≥ 90 and a shared class (or no classes given); medium = score ≥ 80; low = a strong score but in unrelated classes.

Pricing

Pay per event, no start fee:

Event	Free plan	Starter	Scale and above
Trademark match (a similar filing, or a filing by a watched owner)	$10 / 1,000	$9 / 1,000	$8 / 1,000
Candidates below threshold, already delivered, own filings, no-match, errors	free	free	free

A weekly watch on 5 marks typically finds 0–20 matches, so it costs $0.00–$0.20 a week. Set Maximum cost per run to cap spend: the Actor saves the best-ranked matches up to the limit, stops cleanly, and (with since-last-run) picks up the rest next time.

Tips and limits

• Generic words are noisy: a watch on GLOW finds dozens of filings a week. Add classes (Glow | 3), raise minSimilarity, or use maxResultsPerTerm.
• Design marks: USPTO indexes only the word element and its pseudo-mark. Pure logos without words can be found only via owners. markImageUrl shows the drawing.
• Data freshness: USPTO loads new applications into Trademark Search daily, usually a few days after filing. Since-last-run re-scans a 14-day overlap (7 days for publications), so late-loaded records aren't missed and aren't charged twice.
• Opposition deadline = publication date + 30 days (the initial period). Extensions are requested via ESTTA; check TSDR (sourceUrl) before relying on a date.
• Speed: about 1 USPTO request per second per mark (polite rate limit), so 100 marks take about 2–3 minutes.
• This is a monitoring tool, not legal advice. Similarity scores approximate a likelihood-of-confusion review; a trademark attorney should assess any conflict.

Data source and fair use

Data comes from the USPTO Trademark Search system (tmsearch.uspto.gov), the official public U.S. trademark register. U.S. government records are public domain. The Actor uses no login and no proxy, sends one request at a time (≥ 1 s apart) with a descriptive User-Agent, and never loads TSDR document pages. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.

Use with AI agents and MCP

• Call it from Claude, Cursor or any MCP client through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com) as chaptersoft/trademark-watch, or over HTTP with POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/chaptersoft~trademark-watch/run-sync-get-dataset-items.
• Minimal agent input: {"marks":["YourBrand | 25"],"watchFor":"new-filings","sinceLastRun":true}.
• Pricing is per event with no start fee, so an agent can run it on a fixed budget. Set Maximum cost per run to cap spend.
• Output rows are flat JSON with a stable schema, and the OUTPUT record in the default key-value store gives a one-object run summary.
• Works with Apify schedules, webhooks and the Zapier, Make and n8n integrations for no-code alerts.

FAQ

Do I need a USPTO account or API key? No. It reads the public USPTO Trademark Search service with no login, key or proxy.

How is this different from a paid trademark watch service? You set it up yourself, run it on an Apify schedule and pay only for matches ($10 per 1,000), with no annual fee. It covers U.S. filings today; EU, UK and WIPO are on the roadmap.

Will I be charged again for the same filing next week? Not with sinceLastRun on. Each filing is delivered and charged once; repeats are free.

Can it find logos? Only through their word element or USPTO's pseudo-mark. For pure design marks, watch the company with owners.

Can I watch for several clients? Yes. Save one task per client and give each its own stateKey, so their alert memory stays separate.

Is the score legal advice? No. It approximates a likelihood-of-confusion check to flag filings worth a look. Have a trademark attorney assess any real conflict.

Roadmap

• EUIPO (EU trade marks) via EUIPO's official API, UK IPO, WIPO Madrid and Canada (CIPO) open data. TMview is deliberately not scraped, because EUIPO's terms reserve its data against automated extraction.
• Design-code (logo) watch and goods/services keyword watch.

Missing something you need? Open an issue on the Actor page.