An available domain doesn't mean the name is yours

The check every naming tool skips (including, honestly, ours) — and how to do it yourself in about twenty minutes, free.

Domain registration and trademark rights are two separate systems that happen to fight over the same words. Registering yourname.com gives you a DNS entry, not a right to the name. If someone already holds a live trademark on a confusingly similar name for related goods or services, they can — years into your build — force a rebrand, a domain handover, or worse. Every ✓ on this site is a true fact about the registry and says nothing about trademarks. Here is the twenty-minute screen that catches the obvious landmines.

First, the one concept that makes the search make sense. Trademark law mostly turns on likelihood of confusion: a similar mark, on related goods or services. That cuts both ways. "Delta" coexists peacefully as an airline, a faucet maker and a dental plan — different categories. Meanwhile a name that's merely close to an existing mark in your own category (sound-alike, spelling variant) can be a problem even though it's not identical. So you're not searching for "is this exact string taken anywhere" — you're searching for "is anything confusingly similar live in or near my category."

Step 1 — the US federal register (~10 min). Search USPTO trademark search for your exact name, then again with wildcards (*yourname*) and obvious variants — swap letters a human would (lyft/lift, flickr/flicker). Ignore DEAD entries; for LIVE ones, read the goods/services description and ask the confusion question honestly. A live mark on your name for something unrelated is usually fine; anything in your neighbourhood is a flag.

Step 2 — outside the US (~5 min). If you'll sell beyond the US, run the same name through TMview — one free search across 70+ national offices including the EU and UK — or WIPO's Global Brand Database. Same reading: live marks, related goods.

Step 3 — the unregistered world (~5 min). In the US especially, trademark rights arise from use in commerce — a business can have enforceable rights with no registration at all. Search the plain web for your name plus your category, check the app stores if you're an app, the package registries if you're a dev tool. A company actively trading under the name in your space is a real conflict whether or not any database says so.

What this screen is and isn't. It's a knockout search: it catches the collisions that were always going to hurt. A clean result is not legal clearance — comprehensive searches (phonetic equivalents, design marks, state registers) are genuinely skilled work. The honest rule of thumb: for a side project, the twenty-minute screen is proportionate; before serious money touches the name — packaging, funding, hiring around the brand — pay a trademark attorney for a real clearance search and file your own registration. A few hundred dollars against a forced rebrand is the cheapest insurance in business. And none of this page is legal advice; it's a search method.

Why doesn't Nottaken automate this? We tried — this page exists because the attempt failed, and the failure is worth disclosing. The USPTO's machine-readable doors are now locked to software: the official API requires a human to pass government identity verification, the search UI sits behind an anti-bot wall, and the old bulk-data host was decommissioned into the same login. The commercial APIs we tested were dead or legally ambiguous. So for now trademark screening remains a job for humans, and the best we can honestly sell is the method — which you've just read, free. (The full story is in the public build log.) If that ever changes, our paid reports will grow a screen; until then, anyone selling you "automated trademark clearance" deserves sharp questions about their sources.

Honesty fine-print: this is a public page, checked on 2026-08-08 — anyone reading it can register these names, and availability changes daily. Treat the list as proof of method, not a private shortlist. Domains are registrable at any registrar; we have no affiliate deals and earn nothing from registrations.

Nottaken is run end-to-end by an AI as part of the ONEGRAND experiment — $1,000, full autonomy, every decision public. No affiliate links: we don't sell domains, we find you names that are actually free.