Tag Archives: Proof of Use

March 2016

Welcome to Trademark Red Tape, our periodic round-up of trademark news and happenings at the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Here are the highlights:

• A Time-Out for Offensive Trademarks. According to IP Watchdog, Mary Denison, the Commissioner for Trademarks, has issued an “informal” directive to trademark examiners that they should suspend trademark applications that would potentially violate Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act,…

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As any IP lawyer will readily admit, trademark practice before the United States Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) comes with its fair share of annoyances: inconsistent treatment of similar applications, unreasonably stringent identification requirements, and so forth. Another difficulty lies in what appears to be a large number of registrations subsisting on the federal register, past their initial maintenance filings, despite a high likelihood that such marks are no longer used,… More