I'm a doctor who builds software. Here's why I built a trademark screening tool.
I'm a physician-technologist. I take care of patients during the day. And at night I build medical/healthcare technology software. Most of my career has been at the intersection of medicine and technology: building products, launching brands, solving problems that sit between industries.
A year ago, I was working on a new product and needed to check whether the name I wanted was safe to use. Simple enough, right?
It was not.
The free option was the USPTO's public database. It only catches exact matches. If I searched "NovaBrew," it would miss "NobBrew," "Nova Brew," and every sound-alike that a trademark examiner would flag. I had no way to know if my name was actually clear.
The other option was hiring a trademark attorney. That runs $500 to $1,500, takes three to seven business days, and makes perfect sense when you have a final name and a budget. But I was still evaluating options. I had four name candidates. Paying $2,000+ and waiting a month to screen all four was not practical.
There was no middle step. No way to get a fast, reliable preliminary read on a name before committing time and money to it.
So I built one.
TMScope screens your proposed name against 12 million U.S. federal trademark records. It checks for exact matches, similar spellings, sound-alikes, and goods/services overlap (the same kinds of signals a USPTO examiner evaluates). You get a comprehensive risk assessment and a plain-English report in minutes.
It is not legal advice. It is not a replacement for an attorney. It is the step that comes before: the one that tells you whether a name is worth pursuing or whether you should move on before investing in branding, domains, and legal fees.
The methodology and conflict score algorithm were built with the approval of an intellectual property attorney. Trademark attorneys are already using TMScope for their preliminary consults.
If you are naming a product, a company, or a brand then check the name before you commit to it. That is all TMScope does, and it does it well.
