Preface
This brief note is not legal advice and is for educational purposes only.
For whatever reason, after you’ve filed a trademark (mark) application you’ve decided that you no longer want it.
No urgency
If there is no urgency then you can simply not respond to any office actions and in due course it will go abandoned. The advantage of this approach is if you change your mind before it goes abandoned you can pick it up. You also get to see what if any issues the USPTO noted in any office actions they issued.
The only possible downside is it might issue without an office action in which case you can explicitly kill it (described below) or again just do nothing and it will die in due course.
Urgency or intentionally wanting to kill the trademark application
If you want to intentionally abandon/withdraw/kill your trademark application – you can do that. Please read the No Urgency section above to be aware of the benefits of that approach. Still want to kill it then you use a form called “Request for Express Abandonment (Withdrawal) of Application”.
It’s also known as form PTO-2202 however the form is only available online which requires you or your attorney to log into TEAS (Trademark Electronic Application System). A shortcut URL is:
https://teas.uspto.gov/rea/ (rea = request express abandonment)
Once you are logged in the top of the form will look similar to this:
Conclusion
You or your attorney can cancel a trademark application. Consult your attorney.
