How to Request a Trademark Extension For Office Action

What is the new deadline to respond to trademark Office Actions? When you’ve practiced trademark law long enough, you take certain things for granted. Things like Office Action deadlines never seem to change. Patent Office Action deadlines are extendable. And, until recently, trademark Office Action deadlines were not extendable. Things change. Except for Madrid applications, […]

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What are confusable trademarks and examples of non-confusable trademarks?

What does confusable mean? To be registrable, a mark must not have a likelihood of confusion with any registered trademarks. In other words, an applied-for mark must not be “confusable” with any registrations owned by someone else. Pending applications filed by third parties with an earlier filing date might also cause your application to be […]

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What is a partial refusal?

What is a partial refusal in a trademark Office Action? A trademark Office Action with a partial refusal can be a mix of good news and bad news. The bad news is that a portion of your mark is being rejected. The good news is that the remainder of your trademark application is acceptable. In […]

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Trademark application rejections: Reasons why and how to respond

Why do trademark applications get rejected? Most trademark applications are not approved on their first go-around according to USPTO trademark statistics. Only 34.4% of TEAS Plus applications and 16.3% of TEAS RF applications receive a “first action approval” (as of the date of this post). That means that Office Actions are issued against the vast […]

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Prior-filed application: How to deal with suspension

What is a prior-filed application? A prior-filed application is a trademark application with an earlier filing date than yours. If the USPTO trademark examining attorney sees a potential likelihood of confusion between your mark and that of the earlier-filed application, the examining attorney will note the prior-pending application in an Office Action [see TMEP 716.02(c)]. […]

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What is likelihood of confusion?

What is the purpose of a trademark? A trademark serves to indicate the source of goods or services (in this post, I’ll refer to both goods and services collectively as “products” for simplicity). A trademark may comprise words and/or logos used in connection with the sale of goods or services. In rare cases, a trademark […]

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What is a trademark Office Action?

What is a trademark Office Action? When you apply to register a trademark with the USPTO, your trademark application will be assigned to a trademark examiner called an “examining attorney.” Unlike patent examiners, trademark examiners are all licensed attorneys at law. A trademark Office Action is a letter issued by the examining attorney reviewing your […]

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How to Respond to a Trademark Office Action

What is a trademark Office Action? A trademark Office Action is a letter issued by the USPTO examiner reviewing your trademark application. Actually, a USPTO trademark examiner is called an examining attorney. Here are some practical tips on how to respond to a trademark Office Action. In general, there are two types of issues raised […]

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