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In a recent announcement, the USPTO notified trademark practitioners that its practice regarding grace periods for certain affidavit and renewal filings will be changed during a test program. Traditionally, if a trademark owner does not file a §8 affidavit or §9 renewal prior to the end of the six-month grace period (re: 15 U.S.C. §§1058 and 1059), the USPTO traditionally provides a three-month grace period before it updates its records to notify the public that a trademark has either been cancelled or expired. According to the USPTO announcement (link below), the new pilot program will ?shorten the additional waiting period before Office records are updated to thirty days after the expiration of the statutory grace period ? resulting in prompter purging of registrations from the Register that are not in compliance with §§ 8 and 9 of the Act.? In addition, this change ?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.? Additional information on this pilot program, as well s comments regarding the purpose behind the traditional three-month waiting period, are provided in the link below.

USPTO Announcement: LINK

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