Sunday, February 14, 2021
Individuals and businesses all over the world rely on the accuracy and integrity of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s (PTO) federal Trademark Register to inform key decisions regarding branding and marketing. The Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (TMA), part of the COVID-19 relief legislative package signed into law on December 27, 2020, acknowledges this by, among other things, establishing new procedures and creating powerful tools to fortify the reliability of the Register, while addressing the long-standing issues caused by trademark filings based on false assertions of use in the United States.
Challenging Unused Trademarks
The TMA, which will go into effect on December 27, provides two new mechanisms to challenge existing trademark registrations on the ground of non-use and are intended to reduce the effort required for interested parties to remove abandoned marks from the Register.