It’s fascinating to see the USPTO correcting its mistake in a recent acknowledgment of an incontestability claim in a trademark registration.
Recall my previous post “An excellent blog that you should subscribe to” in which I urged you to subscribe to the blog of law professor Rebecca Tushnet. I linked to her article No dog in this fight: PTO makes a cancelled mark incontestable. The article pointed out a mistake which the USPTO made, making a trademark registration incontestable when it was already of record that the registration was the subject of litigation.
Those who had read Professor Tushnet’s article, or who had discussed it in the E-Trademarks listserv, or who had read about it in my blog, wondered whether the USPTO just might sua sponte withdraw its grant of incontestability. Some USPTO person following the professor’s blog, or lurking in the listserv, might see the discussion and bring it to the attention of some high-up person at the USPTO who might initiate a sua sponte proceeding.
And indeed the USPTO initiated a sua sponte proceeding. And canceled the grant of incontestability.
You can see this here.
Still leaves open the question as to whether the specimens submitted meet the requirements of Section 8.
True.