Can I lose my Trademark registration if I don’t use my trademark?
Yes, you can lose your trademark registration if you don’t use it. If you don’t use your trademark after you get a registered trademark, you can lose your trademark rights. Remember the reason why trademarks exist in the first place: Trademarks exist to allow trademark owners to distinguish their goods and services from other people’s goods and services. If you’re not selling anything using the trademark, then you have no goods and services to distinguish, and therefore you don’t need a trademark. If you’re not offering any goods and services, then you can’t use the trademark; it’s not possible.
Trademarks are used in conjunction with the offer of goods and services in commerce.
If you are not offering goods and services, then It’s not possible for you to have trademark use. Here are some things that people think are trademark use are not trademark use.
- Owning a URL is not trademark use.
- Having a business LLC with the same name as the purported trademark is not trademark use.
- Putting the purported trademark on a website where no goods or services are offered is not trademark use.
What is trademark use?
- Using the trademark on a sales page where a certain product or service is offered or provided is trademark use.
- Using the trademark at a point of sale display is trademark use.
- Using the trademark on the product itself is trademark use.
- Using the trademark on the packaging for a product is trademark use.
- Using the trademark on an invoice for the service delivered is trademark use.
- Using a trademark in conjunction with an advertisement for the services offered is trademark use, if those services are actually delivered to the consumer is trademark use.
In sum, any use of a distinctive word, phrase, or symbol in conjunction with the offer of goods or services is trademark use.
You can register your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Trademarks can be registered or unregistered. Unregistered trademarks are difficult and expensive to enforce, because you don’t have a trademark certificate that proves certain facts about your trademark, such as when your use began, the products or services upon which you are using the trademark, and proof of how you were using the trademark when the registration was issued.
If you register your trademark, in order to obtain a trademark registration, you must show use of the mark in commerce. After you obtain your registered trademark, you must continue to use the trademark in order to maintain your trademark rights. Trademark rights can be lost if you don’t continue to use your trademark. If you don’t use your trademark for a period of around 2 years, you can lose your trademark registration. When your trademark is eligible for renewal, you must show continued use of your trademark in order to renew the trademark registration. There is an exception, however, for cases where there is “excusable non-use.”
What is “excusable non-use” of your trademark?
“Excusable nonuse” of your trademark is a period of non-use that is generally outside of the control of the trademark owner.
Let’s say, for example, that in order to manufacture your product, you need a certain part, and that part comes from only one supplier. The factory for that part burned down, and now you have to wait for the new factory to be built, and it takes months or years for that factory to be rebuilt. In the meantime, you can’t manufacture your product, because you can’t get the parts. That would be “excusable non-use” and wouldn’t be used as a reason to cancel your trademark for non-use.
In contrast, an abandonment of a trademark is a case where the trademark simply isn’t used, and there is no particular reason why; maybe the company just decided to phase out that product and to cease manufacture. That’s an abandonment of the trademark, rather than excusable non-use.
The bottom line: If you would like to keep your trademark rights, you must use your trademark in commerce.
I’m on Facebook! “Like” my facebook page, to be notified every time I go LIVE. Do you have trademark questions? Message me on the Trademark Doctor Facebook page, and I’ll answer your questions on a future Live video.
Contact Dallas, Texas trademark attorney Angela Langlotz today to get started on a trademark application for your valuable brand.