What is a Notice of Allowance in a trademark filing with the United States Trademark Office?

A Notice of Allowance is a document issued by the Trademark Office approximately eight weeks after your intent-to-use trademark application has been approved for registration, published for opposition and not opposed, but before it is officially registered. It indicates that your mark has been allowed to register but hasn’t actually registered. Within six months from the issue date of the Notice of Allowance, you need to take specific actions to establish the use of your trademark.

If a Notice of Allowance has been issued, you establish use by filing a Statement of Use form. This form includes a sworn statement affirming that you are currently using the mark in commerce for all the goods or services listed in your application. You should remove any goods or services for which the mark is not in use. The Statement of Use must also include the following:

– A government filing fee of $100 per class of goods or services.

– The date of first use of the mark anywhere and the date of first use of the mark in commerce.

– One specimen demonstrating how you use the mark in commerce for each class of goods or services.

The deadline to file the Statement of Use is within six months from the issue date shown in the Notice of Allowance, not the date you receive it. If you haven’t used the mark in commerce yet, you must file a Request for an Extension of Time to File a Statement of Use (Extension Request) before the end of the six-month period to avoid the application being declared abandoned.

You can request up to five additional extensions, each for up to 36 months from the Notice of Allowance issue date, by providing a statement of your ongoing efforts to use the mark in commerce. Each Extension Request requires a filing fee of $125 per class of goods or services. The grant or denial of an Extension Request does not affect the deadline for filing the Statement of Use or the next Extension Request, as the deadline is always calculated from the issue date of the Notice of Allowance.

If the Notice of Allowance hasn’t been issued yet, and your application hasn’t been approved for publication, you may file an Amendment to Allege Use, which includes the same information as the Statement of Use. However, it’s important to note that you cannot file the Amendment to Allege Use during the “blackout period” after the mark’s approval for publication and before the issuance of the Notice of Allowance. In such a case, you must wait until after the blackout period to file your Statement of Use. If you require assistance with this process, an attorney representing you at the Firm through Brandme can guide you. Click here to start your trademark application through brandme.