Reviving an Abandoned Trademark Application

A trademark application will be abandoned by the Trademark Office if a deadline passes without you taking certain action. This can happen, for instance, if the Trademark Office has issued you an Office Action that requires a response, and the normal 6-month period for response elapses. It will also happen if you filed an intent-to-use trademark application, the Trademark Office sent you a Notice of Allowance, but you failed to submit a Statement of Use within 6 months showing that you were properly using the mark in commerce.

 An abandoned trademark application isn’t necessarily lost and gone forever. While in some cases you may have to re-file the application anew, in other cases, you may be able to petition for the revival of the application.

There are limitations on these petitions to revive. They must be filed within 2 months of the abandonment, or within 2 months of the Notice of Abandonment. Your failure to make the original response deadline must have been unintentional, and you must swear to this. The petition has to be accompanied by a petition fee, and by whatever response or action was due on the original deadline.

Time is of the essence when a trademark application has been abandoned. It is therefore important that you act quickly to revive the application if it is your intent to do so. Additionally, you should respond correctly. For those reasons, consider hiring a trademark attorney to handle the petition to revive, to help ensure that the time and money you’ve already invested in the trademark application up to this point isn’t unnecessarily wasted.