[E-trademarks] Petition to restore filing date

[Pamela Chestek]

I attended a USPTO Hour this morning where fraudulent applications were 
discussed. Amy Cotton was abundantly clear that the fraudulent 
application should not be pursued, even though the applicant was 
innocently duped, and that the only thing that should be done is file a 
new application. I'm not familiar with the possibility of restoring or 
reassigning an application number to a different application, but based 
on what was said you're not going to get much sympathy.


It was an interesting session, where I learned more than I expected to 
learn. Off the top of my head, my takeaways were:


There are two major categories of fraud they're looking at right now:

     Trademark mills, where US attorneys are signing applications 
prepared by others and not reviewing them;

     The theft of attorney credentials, California attorneys in particular.


Ms. Cotton also talked about the fraudulent applications that aren't 
being processed, some from as far back as 2022. They are aware that 
these are causing hardship on other applicants because they are holding 
up later-filed applications. They had hoped to dispose of them by now, 
but had to other fires to put out:

     An excess of fraudulent CAR filings

     ... and I forget the second one

But they are trying to get the fraudulent applications taken care of.


They are working towards role-based access to logins, that is, you will 
only be able to work on your own records.


They are working on automating the identification and processing of 
fraudulent applications. At the moment it is done manually. I have mixed 
feelings about this, mostly based on how it is implemented. I have long 
thought that the PTO didn't appear to be taking advantage of the machine 
data they have available for the identification of fraudulent 
applications, so I am optimistic that algorithmic identification could 
be more reliable than the current practices. However, I do worry that if 
a valid application is caught up (say you were on vacation in China and 
signed a few applications in rapid succession), your applications may 
get stuck in purgatory, or the algorithm is going to be less discerning 
than the manual process now used.


Pam


Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS
4641 Post St.
Unit 4316
El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
+1 919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal
www.chesteklegal.com


On 4/23/2025 3:10 PM, Russell Nugent via E-trademarks wrote:
> Dear Group,
> A new client of mine filed an application through a third party 
> freelance service.  The freelancer they connected her with filed two 
> trademark applications under the name of an attorney not affiliated 
> with them.  The USPTO found out the attorney of record had nothing to 
> do with the filing and so issued a notice of incomplete trademark 
> application and cancelled the application serial number.  The remedy 
> was to refile the application correctly and then file a petition to 
> restore the serial number which was simply denied.  Can anyone with 
> any experience with this type of petition provide any guidance on how 
> to approach the USPTO  and whether proving she was scammed is reason 
> to restore the original serial number?
> Thanks in advance,
>
>
> Russell D. Nugent
> Comprising IP
> 1213 Culbreth Dr, Ste 112
> Wilmington, NC 28405
> nugent at comprisingip.com (private)
> 910-550-3259 (private)
> contact at comprisingip.com
> 910-509-7131
>
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