How Long Does It Take?

In 2012, First Actions took an average of 3.2 months  and Final Dispositions for non-ITU registrations took an average of 10.2 months (not including suspensions for likelihood of confusion conflicts or other conflicts with pending registrations and inter partes proceedings).

The USPTO has met their goals of maintaining an acceptable trademark pendency for several years and achieved a 4% increase in applications over 2011.

Contested Trademark Cases Within the USPTO FY 2012 and FY 2011

Trademark Oppositions are one reason for the differences in pendency between 10.2 months and 12 months for 2012. There were 5,160 trademark oppositions filed in 2012 and 16,946 extensions of time to file trademark oppositions. Only about 2% of trademark oppositions or trademark cancellations are decided by a final hearing of the Board leaving  about 98% that are decided by the parties one way or another  including default or settlement. (There were no Interferences in  2011 or 2012 so these columns have been omitted in these charts.)

KEY: Final1=the time between filing, and any of the following:  Registration (use applications), Abandonments and Notice of Allowance (intent to use)-including suspended and inter partes proceedings

Final2=the time between filing and any of the following: Registration (use applications), Abandonments and Notice of Allowance (intent to use) -excluding suspended and inter partes proceedings

Note: Most of the data for these charts and tables comes from one USPTO report: 2012 Performance and Accountability Report. Most other sources are also USPTO reports and are noted with links provided to the sources. FY 2012 data are preliminary.

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TrademarkStatistics.com

FY 2012 Trademark Statistics

(as reported in USPTO.gov FY 2012 Workload Tables)

(pdf of workload tables only extracted from annual report)

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Why Care or Worry About Trademark Statistics?

Trademark Statistics can help show whether business innovation is on or off track, applicants can act quickly on marketing strategies and business plans if they know their trademarks are going to issue. Uncertainty and delay can kill new product introductions. Weak protection of business innovations can mean that someone else benefits from your success.

A well-prepared trademark application can issue in approximately 7-8 months. The average pending time for an application at the USPTO for 2012 was 10.2 months. This is not just an issue time but rather an issue OR abandon time.

Note on Abandoned Trademarks  According to the USPTO, refusals going unanswered is the biggest reason for abandonment. There were 139,832 abandoned trademarks in 2012. Trademarks that are Expressly Abandoned are often abandoned within a few weeks of application. Presumably the large number of Express Abandonments before first actions (have not yet been examined) are because the applicants are contacted by prior users of conflicting marks and threatened with litigation or future opposition.

A trademark application with refusals because of likelihood of confusion (failure to search and verify availability), merely descriptive trademark, (failure to find an inherently distinctive trademark), failure to function as  mark (failure of finding a good specimen  or invalid use of trademark),  or other reasons, cause delay and uncertainty. The delay and uncertainty caused by failed or slowed trademark applications threaten  innovation for businesses large and small. How can a product launch without a distinguishable and safe name? Lack of inherent distinctiveness (generic or merely descriptive words that others have a right to use to describe their products) or conflicting marks can lead to refusals, costly litigation, having to cease and desist using someone else’s mark, or what may be the worst–POOR SALES coming from POOR SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS because a mark that is not distinctive looks and searches just like a million other common words.

Call us for a well-prepared trademark application. Call us for help finding a trademark that WILL SEARCH WELL. Call us for help on how to get better search results. Doing well on search engines is a key to increasing visibility and sales. If you have to buy your way click by click to the top of the page day after day, is your money well spent? Ask us how we can help.

To try our Five Step Verification for Strong Trademarks, call us at (651) 500-7590 or email info@notjustpatents.com.