Submitted by UCS on April 15, 2022

Listen Up! Removing the “noise words” when conducting UCC searches.

In 2015, the International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA) released the revised Model Administrative Rules, which include a specific section frequently referred to as “standard search logic.”

One standard search logic rule is 503.1.2: “No distinction is made between upper-and lower-case letters.” This means the debtor’s name could be entered as ABC COMPANY INC or ABC Company Inc and both are acceptable.

Another rule addresses punctuation: 503.1.3 (b) “Punctuation marks and accents are disregarded. For the purposes of this rule, punctuation and accents include all characters other than the numerals 0 through 9 and the letters A through Z (in upper and lower case) of the English alphabet.”

IACA provides a list of ending noise words pursuant to Rule 503.4. These are words that are removed from UCC search queries to help provide more consistent results. Noise words such as corporate indicators (Inc., Corp., Associate, LLC), when discovered in your query will be ignored and the search will be conducted with the rest of the name. Click here to view the list.

It is important to note that although IACA produces a list of noise words through the Model Administrative Rules, individual filing offices determine their own variation of noise words. Below are links to lists provided by some Secretary of State offices:

California
Colorado
Delaware
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
New Jersey
North Carolina
North Dakota
Oregon
Texas
Washington

United Corporate Services can coordinate and provide comprehensive UCC search services in all filing offices across the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada and some international jurisdictions. Please contact us at info@unitedcorporate.com or (800) 899-8648 for a fee and estimated turnaround time quote today.