I have a client whose office is in a place that lacks reliable USPS postal delivery. Because of the unreliability of the USPS postal delivery to the client’s office, the client uses a post office box to receive its mail. For decades this client has been able to use its post office box in its relationship with the Commissioner for Trademarks. Many of the trademark registration certificates from the USPTO that sit in my client’s safe-deposit box, bearing a gold seal and the signature of the Director of the USPTO, list my client’s post office box as the registrant’s address. Each six-year and decade renewal that this client has filed in recent years years has repeated my client’s post office box as its address.
But not any longer. On July 2, 2019, the USPTO published its Federal Register Notice Requirement of U.S. Licensed Attorney for Foreign Trademark Applicants and Registrants. This notice promulgated et alia new Rules which the Commissioner construes as making it impossible for a trademark applicant or registrant to receive correspondence at a post office box. And despite having been given multiple opportunities in recent months to soften its position on this, the Commissioner now has doubled down on its refusal to permit the use of a post office box to receive correspondence. Continue reading “Commissioner for Trademarks doubles down on “no post office boxes””
