We take over trademark applications you filed yourself.

We start by reading your file, including the goods and services you listed, your filing basis, your specimen, and every deadline on the record.

An office action can raise requirements, refusals, or both.

• Requirements are non-substantive office actions. They are issued for administrative purposes and ask for a clarification or correction, such as clearer goods and services wording, a disclaimer, a signature, or a missing detail.
• Substantive refusals are legal objections that need argument and evidence, such as §2(d) likelihood of confusion, §2(e)(1) mere descriptiveness, or a specimen refusal.

Many refusals can be overcome with the right argument, evidence, or amendment. Some can’t, so find out which kind you have before you spend more on the name.

For likelihood of confusion, the examiner weighs the du Pont factors. The main ones are how similar the marks look, sound, and mean, and how related the goods and their trade channels are. A prior pending application with an earlier filing date can also put your application on hold until that one is decided.

A formal response to the USPTO isn’t the only tool, and for a likelihood-of-confusion refusal it may not be enough. The mark blocking yours can often be dealt with directly. Its owner may sign a coexistence agreement, also called a consent agreement, which the examiner gives real weight. If the blocking registration is no longer in use, it may be cancelled through a cancellation petition or a nonuse expungement or reexamination proceeding. If the blocking mark is still a pending application, it can be opposed when it is published.

Examiners accept real labels, tags, packaging, and live product pages with a way to buy; mockups and digitally altered photos are refused. For apparel, see ornamental refusals.

The deadline is printed on the office action and on your application’s record. International applications filed through the Madrid Protocol can follow different response periods, so check the office action itself.

• Over-claiming goods and services. Listing things you don’t sell invites later attacks. In TTAB challenges, non-use when required is pleaded in 9.3% of filings, fraud in 10.3%, and no bona fide intent to use in 3.2%.
• The wrong filing basis. Filing as “in use” before you’re selling, or the reverse.
• Specimens that don’t prove use. A mockup or render shows a planned product and does not prove it is on sale.
• No clearance search. Likelihood of confusion is pleaded in 82.6% of oppositions. Most of that risk is visible before filing. See how to search for a trademark.
• A descriptive name. A name that merely describes the product is hard to register without proof it has come to identify your brand.

Chatbots and fill-in-the-blank services make the form feel easy, but they don’t check whether your description matches how you sell or whether a stronger mark already owns the space.

Apparel also leads in oppositions. Clothing, T-shirts, and headwear were the three largest opposition categories in 2025, with 1,154, 1,060, and 1,014 matters. Consumer goods run the highest share of unrepresented defendants, at 41% for T-shirts and footwear and 48% for activewear.

Once that window closes, the usual route is a new application with a new filing date, which matters when someone else has filed in the meantime.

An answer keeps the case open, and with it the chance of a negotiated, narrower registration; a default ends the application. See what to do about a trademark opposition for the steps and deadlines.

The government filing fee is the same either way. Filing alone saves the attorney’s fee until an office action, a refusal, or an opposition arrives, and fixing an application after the fact can cost more than filing it well the first time. Be wary of any service that guarantees a registration.