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trademark What is Abandonment notice in a trademark

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Does this mean the trademark is no longer Valid?

What is Abandonment notice in a trademark?


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Also says:
Status
602
- Abandoned-Failure To Respond Or Late Response
Status Date
2005-01-06
Filing Date
2003-11-11


Class Status Code
6
- Active
Class Status Date
2003-12-12
Primary Code
036
 
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I think it means the mark is dead and unrevivable. They could apply again with a new date but I am not sure if its ever revivable to the original filing date.
 
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It could mean a whole bunch of different things.

It could mean that someone filed a trademark registration application, didn't know what to do with the action that issued in June, and since there are six months to reply to an action, the application went abandoned.

It says NOTHING AT ALL about whether they were or are using the underlying mark, or whether they still are using the mark.

One would need MORE INFORMATION to figure out what it means.

As I've often said, the information you can get from a registration database is a starting point, and not an ending point, for additional research.

Looking at trademark registration data alone is not very useful or informative.

In this instance, you are looking at US Appln. No. 78326505 for "DEVDES" for "Publication of Magazine/Electronic featuring multimedia tutorial recorded on computer media and paper" - and we know that because you provided enough data to uniquely identify that application.

The first thing you might do, in order to find out whether "DEVDES" is a trademark for anything, is to do a Google search for "devdes".

STOP THINKING THAT TRADEMARK REGISTRATION DATABASES ARE GOING TO ANSWER THE QUESTION OF "IS THERE A TRADEMARK ON THIS THING?"

But, let's take a look at the other data in that application record...
 
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The full data is here:

https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=78326505&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

The first thing you might notice is that this is a 1(b) application, and not a 1(a) application. A 1(b) is an intent-to-use application, and not an application based on use of the mark in commerce. I've written on namepros about that difference before, and this forum has a search feature.

So, that's an initial indication that this application, filed in 2003 and abandoned after failure to reply to an office action, might not correspond to a mark they were using. It doesn't answer the question, but it's a clue.

Now, let's have a look at the applicant.

The applicant is a Flashlanta Inc. of Georgia, and their email address is at flashlanta.com. Well, golly, the fact that flahslanta.com doesn't exist anymore might be a pretty big clue. Let's dig deeper... maybe conduct a Google search to find out what happened to Flashlanta. Did they and their assets get purchased, maybe? Maybe even do a Google search for "Flahslanta Devdes" to see if that comes up with any trace of use of that mark by this entity.

Or... have a look at the Georgia secretary of state corporation database to see what may have become of Flashlanta Inc.:

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And, hey, waddya know, I'll bet that [email protected] was April Williams, the CFO of the company. And when someone has a name like Ivan Mbakop, they are pretty easy to track down and figure out whether they might have a continuing interest in an intent to use application which was filed in 2003, received an office action in 2004 and was deemed abandoned for failure to reply to the office action some six months later (the actual notice lags the abandonment date).

But, no, just because a trademark registration application was abandoned does not, as an isolated fact, tell you anything conclusive. It IS, however, a starting point to find out.
 
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Finally, going back to that initial Google search to figure out whether someone was USING "DEVDES" as a mark, instead of mucking around in trademark databases to figure out what someone may or may not have filed in a government office somewhere... that first step is enough to figure out that "DEV DES" is commonly used as a shorthand for "device design", since a lot of the Google results are job listings or cv's of people who are semiconductor device designers.

That alone is a really important clue to what sort of targeting or use one would make of a domain name like DEVDES.tld in order to avoid inadvertently bumping into a trademark in any of the over 100 trademark-registration-issuing countries in the world OTHER than the United States.
 
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