The USPTO announced a new pilot program.  When no §8 affidavit or §9 renewal is filed before the end of the six-month grace period, (see 15 U.S.C. §§1058 and 1059), the USPTO’s practice has been to wait an additional three months after the grace period expires before updating its records to show the registration as cancelled or expired. The USPTO has begun a pilot program to shorten the additional waiting period before Office records are updated to thirty days after the expiration of the statutory grace period.

The USPTO established the three-month waiting period due to the administrative delays associated with processing paper-filed §§8 and 9 submissions (e.g., manually matching them with a registration file and scanning them into the Trademark database). However, with the ever-increasing percentage of electronically-filed §8 affidavits and §9 renewals, which are then automatically uploaded into the Trademark database, the overall average processing time has significantly decreased.

Accordingly, the USPTO is now testing a change in practice resulting in prompter purging of registrations from the Register that are not in compliance with §§ 8 and 9 of the Act. The change will also decrease the suspension period for those applications awaiting the disposition of registrations cited under Section 2(d) of the Act, where Office records do not show that a required maintenance filing was timely received.