You should not file a trademark application without a lawyer. You should also not pay a lawyer $1,500 to tell you that your top ten names are all taken by sandwich shops in Ohio. The middle ground is a 30-minute self-clearance pass that catches the obvious problems before legal billing starts.
Step 1: USPTO TESS basic search. Go to tmsearch.uspto.gov and run a basic word search for the exact mark. Filter by live registrations. If you see a registered mark in your goods/services class. say class 9 for software, class 35 for advertising and business, class 41 for education. flag it as risky. Marks in unrelated classes (class 25 for clothing, class 30 for coffee) are usually fine for tech startups. The card on the generator includes a TESS shortcut.
Step 2: phonetic equivalents. The USPTO blocks marks that sound like existing ones, even with different spelling. If your candidate is "Klariti" and "Clarity" is registered in class 9, you have a problem. Try the candidate as a phonetic spelling and search again. This catches half of the surprises.
Step 3: common-law search. Trademark rights exist even without registration, especially in the United States. Google the candidate in quotes plus your category. '"Loomly" SaaS', '"Loomly" software'. If a tiny competitor in your category has been using the name for two years, they have common-law rights in their region even if they never filed. You can sometimes coexist, but plan for the conversation.
Step 4: international check if you have international ambition. WIPO Global Brand Database (branddb.wipo.int) is free and covers 60+ jurisdictions. If you plan to sell into Europe or Asia in the next two years, run the candidate through WIPO before committing. Country-specific registers in the EU are at euipo.europa.eu, in the UK at the IPO, in Korea at KIPRIS, and in Japan at J-PlatPat.
Step 5: handle and domain check, again. Trademark and domain are separate systems. A clean trademark with no .com is half a brand. A clean .com with a blocked trademark is a rebrand-in-waiting. Both must clear.
What this 30-minute pass protects against: filing a trademark you will lose, picking a name you will get a cease-and-desist for in three months, building marketing assets around a name that you cannot defend.
What this pass does not protect against: design-mark conflicts, foreign jurisdictions you did not search, common-law users you could not find on Google. For a B2C consumer app, hire a lawyer for $1,500 to do the comprehensive search before launch. For a B2B SaaS at pre-seed, the 30-minute self-pass plus a $400 attorney consultation usually covers the actionable risk until you raise a Series A.
The cheap mistake is not running the search. The expensive mistake is filing without it.