Another development in “where you sleep at night”

(Update:  a letter has been sent.  See blog article.)

Update:  The TTAB has issued a Precedential Opinion affirming the refusal.  See blog article.

There is a very interesting development in “where you sleep at night”.

You might have thought that on about January 22^nd or so, 2021, the Trademark Office might have decided that changes of circumstance might permit it to drop its insistence on prying into the personal lives of its applicants, demanding to know where they sleep at night (January 22, 2021 blog article).  Nope.  

To the extent that the Trademark Office gave a supposed justification for demanding that applicants reveal their domiciles, it was to try to force applicants to hire US counsel.  The supposed justification for trying to force applicants to hire US counsel was that supposedly this would lead to a reduction in the number of abusive trademark filings from certain categories of trademark filers.  Did it work?  Nope.  The number of such filings has not been reduced but has actually increased substantially since then.  (See blog article dated June 28, 2021 entitled Over 900,000 pending US trademark applications!)  The backlog for examination of a newly filed US trademark application has ballooned from three months to well over six months.  Given that the “where you sleep at night” rule failed at its stated goal, you might think the Trademark Office would have scrapped it by now for that reason.  Nope.

Which brings us to the latest development in “where you sleep at night”.  An ex parte appeal has been filed in US trademark application number 88938938 (see TTABVue file).  You can see the appeal brief, which I think is very interesting reading.

The Trademark Examining Attorney’s brief will be due in about sixty days.  It will be very interesting to see the brief of the Trademark Examining Attorney.