Anonymous Comment on Letters of Protest
Set out below is an anonymous comment on the ALTAMURA DISTILLERIES case, recently TTABlogged here.
The TTAB has published some statistics on the "approvals" of Letters of Protest. The number of LOP's increased after the TMA, but then the PTO started charging $50 and then raised it to $150.
In the past the USPTO rejected an extremely high percentage of LOP's because they "allegedly" contained irrelevant information or were filed improperly. They even had a class on it, although it was far from clear how to properly format the letter and what evidence to present. The class was TERRIBLE.
Interestingly, the number of rejections is substantially higher (about 30% v. 94%) for those filed post-publication - which makes no sense because that is when third parties often first become aware. Is that not the purpose of publication? But in typical PTO fashion they punish people for learning about it after publication. I guess because it messes up their "system."
Even though the rejections may have gotten better, this page makes it even more confusing.
The sad part is that a letter of protest had to be filed in this case in the first place.
This shows the inconsistency of the office in issuing refusals. Clearly, this was the exact same mark on related goods, so the examiner just completely blew it and failed to read his own search report which I checked and it clearly showed the issue. At least good for him that he noted his error and issued a refusal.
In almost identical situations, I have found that examiner's ignore the letter of protest and allow it to be published - maybe because they do not want to look like they blew it. This results in an expensive TTAB proceedings and in most cases having the application refused by TTAB.
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Text Copyright John L. Welch 2025.
posted by John L. Welch @ 11/17/2025
1 comments
1 Comments:
Was watching progress of identical mark on related goods, thought for sure the examining attorney would issue a 2(d), esp. since the already registered marks appeared in her search, application oddly moved way faster than the then standard speed, next thing I knew it was up for publication, I scrambled to do letter of protest with compelling evidence (which succeeded) but after examining attorney was told to consider registered marks and submitted evidence, nothing happened to application for better part of a year. Don't know why and no one at PTO would even speak to me about it because I was not attorney of record and one person sternly reprimanded me that I should not have violated procedure by calling. Eventually, I managed to get a sympathetic ear and the application was kicked loose from no man's land with a 2 (d). But a huge time suck, nerve-wracking to boot and an unhappy client.
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