[E-trademarks] Yet Another TM Backlog - What If The EA Doesn't Examine?

[Carl Oppedahl]

On 2/24/2025 7:53 PM, Ken Boone via E-trademarks wrote:
> Well, I started reviewing the prosecution histories of the older 
> applications.  Many of these applications have been stagnant for 
> years.  Then again, attorneys in this discussion group would be 
> contacting the USPTO frequently to get their applications moving 
> forward, right?

This is a fun question.

Keep in mind if a case had been filed by a /pro se/ filer, it is not 
beyond imagining that the filer might allow a long time to pass without 
going back and checking on status.

And then imagining a case filed by some attorney who really ought not to 
be doing it -- an attorney who has only filed two applications in their 
career and one of them was ten years ago. In an office where nobody else 
has ever filed a trademark application, or maybe it is a solo 
practitioner.  And docketing is only carried out in a limited fashion.  
Such a trademark file might not get looked at again until something 
shows up from the Trademark Office.

Then we turn to trademark mills.  Some of them are probably actually 
pretty good about stuff like docketing.  A few of them might sort of 
give almost no attention to the case once the up-front money has been 
collected.

But yes, the listserv members who do almost nothing all day except 
trademark work, they are surely going to set sensible dockets and are 
surely going to make inquiry when it makes sense. In our office we would 
start to worry if 7-8 months had passed since filing and no indication 
of progress.  Having said that, in the past year I think every case we 
filed did get acted upon by an EA before 8 months had passed.

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