It is a wearisome business trying to guess what the USPTO will do next in its demands to know where the trademark applicant sleeps at night. It is recalled that the USPTO’s stated reason why it supposedly needs so badly to know where the applicant sleeps at night is so that the USPTO can figure out whether the applicant is faking a US domicile to avoid having to retain a US attorney. Common sense would suggest that if, prior to the mailing of the Office Action, the applicant had already taken the step of retaining a US attorney, then there would be no reason to require the applicant to reveal where he or she sleeps at night. Indeed in many cases the trademark application was filed in the first place by a US attorney, so that at no point during the pendency of the application would this inquiry into the applicant’s sleeping habits have been needed.
In one recent development, the USPTO doubled down on its policy of inquiring into applicants’ sleeping habits, filing its appellee’s brief in a litigation against the USPTO about this policy. (See blog article.) But in another development, the USPTO has blinked a little bit. Continue reading “USPTO responds to one hundred eleven trademark practitioners on “where you sleep at night””