Earlier this month, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a notice of proposed rule-making to implement provisions of the Trademark Modernization Act (TMA), which.
The USPTO proposed to amend the rules to implement certain provisions of the he Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 TMA The proposed new and amended rules establish procedures and fees for ex parte expungement and reexamination proceedings.
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As we wrote in Part 1 of this series, the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”) was signed into law on December 27, 2020, and contained several significant amendments to the Lanham Act. This post will cover three of the legislative changes, all pertaining to the elimination of “deadwood” marks that clutter the register and create needless impediments to registration of new marks: (1) ex parte expungement; (2) ex parte reexamination; and (3) non-use cancellation.
These new vehicles for challenging unused marks will not take effect until December 27, 2021, and implementing regulations and procedures, as well as the fees for these procedures, have not yet been established.
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In case you missed it, President Trump signed the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (TMA) into law on December 27, 2020. The TMA, which garnered bi-partisan support and was included in the
COVID-19 Economic Relief Bill, establishes the following four changes to current trademark laws:
It formalizes a process for submitting evidence against pending third party trademark applications;
It enables the USPTO to shorten Office Action response deadlines from the current six-month period to anywhere between two months and six months;
It creates
ex parte Expungement and Reexamination proceedings as new methods for seeking cancellation of a third-party trademark registration; and
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On December 27, 2020, Congress signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, into law. The omnibus act includes new legislation affecting patent, copyright and trademark law. A brief summary of key provisions is provided below.
Patents – Section 325 Biological Product Patent Transparency
42 USC § 262(k) was amended to require that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provide the public with more information about patented biological products. Within six months, the FDA must make the following information available to the public on its Database of Licensed Biological Products or “Purple Book,” and it must update the list every 30 days: