TMview's trademark search has three match modes, not one — and two of them are misnamed
TMview 's search endpoint takes a criteria field in every request: { "page" : "1" , "pageSize" : "50" , "criteria" : "C" , "basicSearch" : "solarwinds" } The web UI always sends "C" , and so did our Actor when we started digging — it's the only value anyone writes about, because it's the only value the UI ever exercises. We tried the rest of the alphabet against the live endpoint to see what else…
TMview's search endpoint accepts three distinct match modes: contains (C), whole word (W), and ends with (E). The web UI and documentation default to C, but the other modes are less known. Searching solar with C returns 69,675 matches, W returns 42,875 matches, and E returns 24,881 matches. C finds any occurrence of "solar" within a name, W requires "solar" to be a standalone word, and E requires "solar" to be at the end of a name.
The modes were not documented until this post revealed the three valid values. The correct mode for clearance searches is C, as it returns only relevant matches. W is incorrect for this purpose, as it can overlook marks that begin with the search term within longer words. E, despite being named "word-bounded," does not require the term to be a standalone word at the end of a name.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
