The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Monday, December 2, mistakenly issued notices of abandonment for at least a few hundred trademark applications that received a Notice of Allowance on April 30, 2024. According to the USPTO’s website notice, the mistake was caused by a system error.

A spokesperson for the Office was unable to provide the precise number of affected applications as the Office is continuing to investigate the error. The error relates to a temporary process put in place due to retirement of the Trademark Reporting and Monitoring (TRAM) system; that temporary process was discontinued in May of this year.

Source: Eric Perrott

Eric Perrott of Gerben Perrott PLLC first posted about the error on his LinkedIn page yesterday after Gerben Perrott Associate Sophie EdBrooke alerted him to the problem. “I have no idea how something like this happens, but having the client accidentally receive an official USPTO email that their trademark application is abandoned is absolutely inexcusable,” wrote Perrott.

While he originally posted that the error might have affected “thousands” of applications, Perrott has since updated his post to indicate the number of affected applications is in the hundreds.

The USPTO’s alert explained that “[t]he affected customers filed a timely request for an extension of time to file a Statement of Use, but received an incorrect abandonment notice dated December 2.” The Office said it is working to correct the status of the affected applications and apologized for the inconvenience.

Source: Eric Perrott

This is not the first time a system error has plagued the Office. In May of this year, the USPTO announced that, due to a computer programming error in Assignment Center, which replaced the Electronic Patent Assignment System and the Electronic Trademark Assignment System on February 5, 2024, the Office “inadvertently published non-public patent application titles and numbers that could be viewed during the recordation process by unauthorized individuals with access to registered Assignment Center accounts.”

This took place between February 5, 2024, and March 29, 2024, but the Office said “specifications, drawings, and claims were not part of the information made available and were not accessed.”

According to the USPTO Notice issued at the time, the error did not threaten any U.S. patents. “While it is unlikely that the title could disclose the invention in a way that would constitute patent-defeating prior art in any jurisdiction, to the extent any issue is raised, the USPTO will assist applicants by confirming that the disclosure was erroneous and inadvertent,” said the Office.

The Notice also assured users that the USPTO would be taking “enhanced steps” to ensure such incidents would not occur going forward.

While the two errors are related to different systems and processes, as of the time of publication the Office had not responded to a request for comment on what steps have been taken to address inadvertent system errors since the May statement was issued, or what precisely caused the more recent trademark error.

IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn said the Office needs to better inform people about the causes of such errors:

“They should tell people how this happened and why these types of things keep happening. While absolute perfection is the rule, we can’t be surprised when absolute perfection is unattainable when dealing with constantly changing and updating computer systems. But, given the sensitivity of what the USPTO deals with, the public deserves some explanation.”

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