Legal

Terms of Service

Last updated:

These Terms take effect when posted on expiredmarks.com.

ExpiredMarks™ is a research and information tool only. It is not legal advice. We are a private company, not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO. We never guarantee that a mark or name is available.

1. Who we are

These Terms are a contract between you and Jack's Inventory Consulting, LLC, a California limited liability company doing business as ExpiredMarks ("ExpiredMarks," "we," "us"). We are based in Sacramento County, California. Our mailing address is PO Box 1221, Rancho Cordova, CA 95741-1221.

These Terms cover expiredmarks.com, your account, our emails and alerts, community cards, and every feature we offer (the "Service").

By using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, don't use the Service.

Our Disclaimers, Billing & Cancellation, Refund Policy, AI Disclosure, Affiliate Disclosure and Corrections & Takedowns pages are part of these Terms. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle data.

2. The short version

  • ExpiredMarks is a research and information tool only. It is not legal advice.
  • We are not a law firm and not the USPTO.
  • A cancelled or expired USPTO registration does not mean a name is free to use. We never claim a name is available.
  • Search is free. Paid plans are monthly tracking subscriptions that renew until you cancel. You can cancel online anytime.
  • Tracking alerts are best-effort. You are responsible for your own filing dates and decisions.
  • AI text can be wrong. Check it yourself.
  • Brocius (brocius.com) is a separate service, sold on brocius.com under that site's own terms and privacy policy. ExpiredMarks links to it and may track those referrals (Section 13).

This summary is for convenience. The full Terms control.

3. Who can use ExpiredMarks

  • You must be 18 or older and able to make a binding contract to buy a plan or create an account.
  • If you use the Service for a company, you confirm you can accept these Terms for it. "You" then includes that company.
  • Give us a true, current email address.
  • Keep access to your email private, since sign-in links and codes go there. You're responsible for activity on your account.
  • One person per account. Don't share or resell accounts.
  • Tell us right away at support@expiredmarks.com if someone used your account without permission.

4. What ExpiredMarks offers

Features may change. Today they include:

  • Free search and browsing of US trademark records whose registration was cancelled or expired per USPTO records.
  • Comeback cards: short write-ups with a business idea and, where we found one, a domain name that wasn't registered when we checked.
  • Community cards: cards any visitor can create for an eligible mark (Section 15).
  • Mark tracking ("Track this mark"): we watch a tracked mark's USPTO status and email you when it changes. Tracking is what our paid plans sell.
  • Favorites: a saved list for members with an active paid plan.
  • Links out to Brocius (brocius.com), a separately sold service, with referral tracking (Section 13).

5. Research tool only, not legal advice

  • We give information, not advice.
  • We are not a law firm. No one here is your lawyer.
  • Using the Service, buying a plan, or emailing us does not create an attorney-client relationship.
  • We never say a name is "available," "clear," "safe" or registrable, and we make no guarantee that any mark or name is available.
  • We don't do clearance searches, prepare filings, file with the USPTO, or deal with the USPTO for you.
  • Before you use, file or invest in a name, run a full clearance search and talk to a licensed trademark attorney.

6. We're not the USPTO

  • We are a private company. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) or any government agency.
  • We don't use the USPTO seal or logo.
  • We never send official-looking filing notices or ask for USPTO fees.
  • Our alerts are emails from a private service, not USPTO mail.
  • Official USPTO email comes from @uspto.gov addresses. Official records are in TSDR (https://tsdr.uspto.gov).
  • USPTO scam warnings: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/protect/caution-misleading-notices

7. Where our data comes from, and who owns what

Source. Our trademark data comes from free public USPTO data, including the Open Data Portal bulk files (https://data.uspto.gov). Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office, www.uspto.gov.

Official status. The only official status is what the USPTO shows in TSDR. Check there before you act. Our copy can be late or wrong.

Public records. US government works aren't protected by copyright (17 U.S.C. §105). We don't claim to own USPTO records.

What we own. We own what we add: the compilation, cards, write-ups, labels, alerts, browse pages, designs and software.

Our name. ExpiredMarks™ and our logos are our trademarks. Don't use them without written permission, except to refer to us accurately.

8. A cancelled or expired registration doesn't mean a name is free

Our pages say, for example, "Registration cancelled per USPTO on March 4, 2024" or "Registration expired per USPTO on March 4, 2024." That reports a public record. It is not a claim that the name is available. The name may still be protected. For example:

  • someone may still use it and own common-law rights;
  • there may be state registrations;
  • the owner may still file late or petition to restore the registration;
  • someone may have a newer filing for the same or a similar name;
  • a famous mark is protected more broadly.

The Disclaimers page explains each one. Do your own checks and talk to a trademark attorney first.

9. Paid plans, automatic renewal and billing

Search is free. Paid plans add mark tracking.

No free trial. You're charged as soon as you subscribe.

Plans and prices. We offer four monthly, tracking-only plans:

Plan Price What's included
Track 1 $0.99 per month Track 1 mark
Track 3 $4.99 per month Track up to 3 marks
Track 25 $9.99 per month Track up to 25 marks
Track 100 $19.99 per month Track up to 100 marks

All plans also include Favorites. Plans don't include Brocius services, domain names or anything else. Prices are in US dollars.

Your plan renews automatically every month at the price shown, until you cancel. There is no minimum term.

Running out of tracking slots. When all your slots are in use, the site shows the plans side by side so you can upgrade, or you can remove a tracked mark to free a slot. Upgrades open Stripe's secure billing page, which shows the new price before you confirm. Track 100 is the largest plan.

Before you pay, we show you, next to the Subscribe button: the price and that you're billed monthly; that the plan renews until you cancel; how to cancel; and a link to these Terms and our Billing & Cancellation page, which includes our Refund Policy.

Your consent. You check one box to accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. You check a separate, unchecked box to agree to automatic renewal. We keep a record of your consent for at least 3 years, or 1 year after your plan ends, whichever is longer.

Acknowledgment email. After you subscribe, we email you your plan, price, renewal terms, cancellation and refund policy and how to cancel, with a direct link.

Annual reminder. Once a year while your plan is active, we email you a reminder of your plan, its price and how often you're charged, and how to cancel.

Payments. Stripe processes all ExpiredMarks payments. We never see your full card number. ExpiredMarks sells only the four tracking plans.

Charges appear on your card statement as EXPIREDMARKS.

Failed payments. Stripe may retry a failed renewal. We may pause paid features until it goes through.

Taxes. Today our prices don't include sales tax and none is added. If sales tax starts to apply, checkout will show it before you pay, and we'll email current subscribers before it's added to a renewal.

10. How to cancel

  • Cancel anytime online. Sign in, go to Account and click Manage or cancel plan (or Cancel subscription). It opens the Stripe customer portal, where you confirm.
  • No call, email or survey is needed.
  • If we ever show an offer when you cancel, a "Click to cancel" button stays on screen next to it.
  • Cancelling stops future charges. It takes effect at the end of your current billing period, and you keep paid features until then.
  • Can't sign in? Email support@expiredmarks.com from your account email and we'll cancel for you.
  • If you ask us to delete your account, we cancel any active plan first, so you aren't charged again.
  • More help: our Billing & Cancellation page.

11. Refunds, price changes and plan changes

Refunds. Our Refund Policy controls. In short: no refunds for partial months after a renewal; duplicate or erroneous charges are refunded if reported within 30 days; and a first-time subscriber who emails within 7 days of their first charge can get a one-time goodwill refund.

Price changes. We'll email you at least 7 and no more than 30 days before a new price applies to your plan, with how to cancel.

Material changes. If we make a material change to your plan, we'll email you before it takes effect and tell you how to cancel.

Upgrades and downgrades. Stripe's billing page shows how a change is billed before you confirm.

12. AI-generated content

  • Some text on ExpiredMarks is made with AI, such as card ideas and write-ups. Our AI Disclosure page explains what and how.
  • AI text can be wrong, out of date or incomplete.
  • AI text is not legal, financial, tax or trademark advice. It never means a name is free to use.
  • It makes no promise of earnings or success.
  • Check it yourself before relying on it.

13. Services sold elsewhere: Brocius

  • Brocius (https://brocius.com) is a DBA of Jack's Inventory Consulting, LLC, the same company that operates ExpiredMarks. It is a separate service.
  • Brocius is sold, paid for and delivered on brocius.com, under that site's own terms, privacy and refund policies. These Terms don't cover it, and ExpiredMarks doesn't charge for it.
  • Our site links to Brocius and may track those referrals. See our Affiliate Disclosure.
  • Brocius offers AI business answers ($10/month for 50 questions, with 3 free questions to start), documents ($10 for members, $25 for non-members) and the Advisors membership ($249/month).
  • A business plan or any Brocius answer never makes a name or mark safe to use and is not legal advice.
  • No ExpiredMarks plan includes Brocius services.

14. Mark tracking and alerts

  • Best-effort only. We don't promise alerts will be on time, complete or correct.
  • Alerts can be late or missed (USPTO delays, spam filters, errors).
  • You stay responsible for every filing date and decision.
  • Check TSDR before acting on any alert.
  • Our alerts are not USPTO notices and never ask you to pay a USPTO fee.
  • Don't use tracking to harass anyone.

15. Community cards

What they are. Anyone can create a community card for a mark whose registration was cancelled or expired per USPTO records. You pick a category and tone; our system writes the idea with AI from the USPTO record. No account is needed. Community cards are never tied to the creator's account. If you're signed in when you create one, it's automatically added to your Favorites, a private saved list you can remove it from; that doesn't make you its public author. For anonymous cards we store only a hashed IP address, no email. Community cards are labeled "Community card" and are published right away.

Limits. One card per mark. We limit how many cards each connection can make each day. We may block a card before it's made, for example if the name looks like a person's name, a famous brand, an offensive word, or a name with a live USPTO registration.

Your license to us. Community cards are generated by our system, and we own the card as a compilation. To the extent you have any rights in a card or in anything you submit (such as your category and tone choices or a request), you give us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license to host, copy, display, edit, adapt, combine, distribute and remove it as part of the Service.

Your promise. Don't use Create Card to target, mock or harass a person or brand owner, to imply anyone endorses you, or to get around our filters.

Moderation. We may review, edit, hide or remove any community card at any time, for any reason or no reason, without notice. We don't promise to review every card before it appears, and a published card doesn't mean we've reviewed or endorse it.

Corrections and takedowns. Requests come in by email to support@expiredmarks.com, with the mark name or serial number, the page link and the reason. A request doesn't hide a card automatically. We review each request and hide cards by hand when we decide it's warranted. See Corrections & Takedowns.

16. Domain checks

  • Some cards show a domain name that wasn't registered when we checked public RDAP data. That's a snapshot. A domain can be taken a second later.
  • We don't sell domains. A "Search this domain at a registrar" link takes you to a registrar's site, where you buy on its terms and prices. We don't earn a commission on it.
  • We don't show domain suggestions on marks whose registration was reinstated.
  • An open domain is not a free trademark. Registering a domain in bad faith that matches someone's mark can break the law (15 U.S.C. §1125(d)).

17. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • scrape, crawl or bulk-download the Service;
  • resell or redistribute our data, cards or pages as a dataset or competing service;
  • get around limits, paywalls, bot checks or security;
  • reverse engineer our software, except where the law allows;
  • overload or attack our systems;
  • use bots or fake accounts, or share paid logins;
  • contact mark owners in bulk, or pretend to be the USPTO or a lawyer;
  • do anything illegal or deceptive, or that violates someone's rights;
  • upload malware or unlawful content.

18. Your content and feedback

  • You keep ownership of what you put in, such as your tracked marks and favorites lists.
  • You let us store and use it to run and improve the Service, as our Privacy Policy says.
  • Community cards are covered by Section 15.
  • If you send ideas or feedback, we may use them freely.

19. Corrections and takedowns

Something wrong? Own a mark and want a page reviewed? See Corrections & Takedowns or email support@expiredmarks.com.

20. Third-party services

We use other companies, such as Stripe for payments and Cloudflare for hosting. Links to other sites, including registrars and Brocius (brocius.com), are governed by those sites' terms. We aren't responsible for those other sites. Brocius is a separate service of the same company and is covered in Section 13, not by these Terms.

21. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and how we use it.

22. Disclaimer of warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND ACCURACY.

WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT:

  • ANY DATA, STATUS, DATE, ALERT, CARD, AI TEXT OR DOMAIN RESULT IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE OR CURRENT;
  • ANY NAME OR MARK IS AVAILABLE, FREE TO USE OR REGISTRABLE;
  • THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE.

23. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS:

  • WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, MISSED FILING DATES, OR COSTS OF REBRANDING OR LEGAL DISPUTES.
  • OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) WHAT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM, OR (B) $100.

24. What these limits don't cover

Nothing in these Terms:

  • limits our liability for our own fraud, willful injury to a person or property, or violation of law (California Civil Code §1668);
  • limits liability for gross negligence or death or personal injury where the law doesn't allow it;
  • takes away consumer rights the law says can't be waived, including under California's Automatic Renewal Law.

If a limit can't apply to you, it applies only as far as the law allows.

25. Indemnity

If you misuse the Service or break these Terms or the law, and someone makes a claim against us because of it, you'll cover our reasonable losses and costs, including reasonable attorney fees. This doesn't apply to the extent we caused the claim.

26. Suspension and termination

  • You can stop using the Service anytime. To delete your account, email support@expiredmarks.com (Section 10).
  • We may suspend or close accounts that break these Terms, misuse the Service, don't pay, or create legal risk.
  • If we close your account without cause, we'll refund the unused part of your current billing period.
  • Sections that by their nature should survive (such as 5–8, 13, 15, 17 and 22–31) still apply.

27. Changes to the Service and these Terms

  • We may change or stop features, with reasonable notice to paying users for major changes.
  • We'll post new Terms and update the "Last updated" date.
  • For material changes, we'll email account holders before they take effect, with how to cancel.
  • If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, the new Terms apply.

28. Governing law and where disputes go

  • California law governs these Terms, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.
  • Please contact support@expiredmarks.com first. Most problems can be fixed by email.
  • Any lawsuit goes to the state or federal courts for Sacramento County, California, and you and we consent to those courts.
  • Either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead, if it qualifies.
  • There is no arbitration agreement in these Terms.

29. California consumer notice

Under California Civil Code §1789.3, California users are entitled to this notice:

  • Provider: Jack's Inventory Consulting, LLC, doing business as ExpiredMarks™, PO Box 1221, Rancho Cordova, CA 95741-1221. Email: support@expiredmarks.com. Phone: (916) 399-3467.
  • Charges: search is free. Tracking plans cost $0.99, $4.99, $9.99 or $19.99 per month (Section 9).
  • Complaints: email support@expiredmarks.com or write to the address above. You may also contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, now the DCA Consumer Information Center, 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N-112, Sacramento, CA 95834; (800) 952-5210.

30. General

  • These Terms and the pages listed in Section 1 are the whole agreement about the Service.
  • If one part is unenforceable, the rest still applies.
  • Not enforcing a term right away isn't a waiver.
  • You can't transfer these Terms without our consent. We may transfer them with our business.
  • We aren't responsible for delays beyond our control, including USPTO outages.

31. Contact us

ExpiredMarks™, a DBA of Jack's Inventory Consulting, LLC
PO Box 1221, Rancho Cordova, CA 95741-1221
Support: support@expiredmarks.com
Privacy: privacy@expiredmarks.com
Web: expiredmarks.com

Support is by email.

ExpiredMarks™ is a research and information tool only, not legal advice. Private company, not affiliated with the USPTO. No guarantee that any mark is available. Always confirm status in TSDR.