Preface
This brief note is not legal advice and is for educational purposes only.
Publication
So, you filed a trademark application and now you’ve received a notice about review prior to publication, or a publication date, or some notice that your trademark is about to be published. What’s that all about? You thought you’d paid the fees and were done. Not so quick.
The idea behind the publication of your mark is to give the public an opportunity to stop or challenge your trademark on the grounds that it will harm them if your trademark gets registered.
So, the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) publishes your trademark in a once a week publication on Tuesday called the Trademark Official Gazette (here’s the link: https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/official-gazette/trademark-official-gazette-tmog ) affectionally called TMOG (TM Official Gazette). The publication starts a 30 day window (which can be extended upon request) in which anyone who believes they will be harmed or damaged by your registration may notify the USPTO and oppose your trademark registration by filing a Notice of Opposition.
Most of the time there is no opposition in which case your registration will be granted if you filed an actual use trademark application and within normally 3-4 months you get notified of your trademark being registered.
On the other hand, if you filed an Intent To Use (ITU) application then you need to file a specimen of use (SOU) and some legal documents, or time extensions in which to file a SOU before your mark gets registered.
If you receive an opposition notice, please contact an attorney immediately as an opposition is a formal legal proceeding and important rights can be lost. The opposition proceeding is before another unit of the USPTO called the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB – you knew there was an acronym coming 🙂 (here’s the link: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/laws/trademark-trialand-appeal-board ).
(This space provided for scribbling important thoughts 🙂
Conclusion
Trademarks get published to afford the public the opportunity to oppose your registration. Most of the time there is no opposition. If you receive an opposition notice, contact your attorney timely.
