Patents and Trademarks: Protecting Your IP

What do you need to do to search for prior art before applying

Trademark identifies the underlining good or service offered by a brand

You are requesting registration of your trademark. Not everything is registerable. Your fee is not refundable.
 

Your ™ may be refused if it is likely to cause confusion with another previously registered.
See if your mark might be confused with another one? (sound alike, look alike, mean the same thing)…if so could there be confusion due to a similar nature (or complimentary, or related in some way, would a company sell both of these things?) of the goods and services being offered? Is there evidence that there are companies which make both types of products. 
If T. Markey and Tee Marky one is t-shirts and the other is golf flags, it might be ok like Dove chocolate and Dove soap.
 

Trademark examiners-Looks only in TESS does not look at state or international trademark databases. Does look around for evidence of relatedness.

Search results can be exported into a csv so that you can look at them later and provide evidence of systematic searching

Might want to look for dead marks to know if there is a abandoned application because it could come back and block you later. Also there could be an entity that has common law trademark still out there still operating which could stop you and then they could cancel your trademark registration or block you from doing business with it.

Are filed but not yet approved trademarks viewable in TESS? Nope, only those already granted appear in the search even if they are in process and could block your application.