Law: Trademark Modernization Act 2020 (USA)

In the TTAB’s first decision in an appeal arising from an expungement proceeding, the board affirmed the USPTO director’s decision to cancel registrations for the mark SMARTLOCK for “components for air conditioning and cooling systems, namely, evaporative air coolers”.

22 July 2024

Challenges to USPTO decisions will likely increase after a new Supreme Court ruling; however, deference-based arguments can still be made, practitioners explain.

05 July 2024

Featured in Trademark Litigation Review 2025

In the past year, US courts have set critical new legal precedents, including on the extraterritorial application of US trademark law and burden of proof for ‘crowded field’ defences. The first round of decisions interpreting the 2020 Trademark Modernization Act’s expungement and reexamination procedures have also made waves, offering new avenues for challenging existing US registrations.

24 November 2023

The Trademark Modernization Act, which has now been in force for one year, introduced new mechanisms for expedited cancellation of registrations. While a review of the past 12 months offers petitioners some understanding of how to demonstrate prima facie evidence of non-use, there is still little guidance about the minimum threshold of proof required.

30 June 2023

Thompson Coburn's Shoko Naruo and Brendan Bement provide a year in review of the US Trademark Modernisation Act, examining the number of expungement/reexamination petitions filed, their results and the effectiveness of the new procedures.

09 March 2023