I am at the University of Nevada Las Vegas School of Law for the annual Trademark Scholars Roundtable. This conference is a true roundtable, not a paper conference, which I love. But because one of the topics involves the relationship between the US Patent and Trademark Office trademark registry and the brand-protection systems like private platforms like Amazon’s Brand Registry, I prepared a few slides of data on a recent policy intervention designed to try to reduce abusive registration practices. The data suggest that this intervention–the new expungement and reexamination procedures of the Trademark Modernization Act–is not being widely used. Indeed, given the scale of the registration system and the perceived scale of the problem, these new procedures seem to be the equivalent of fighting a forest fire with a water pistol. Slides available below:
Trademark Modernization Act Proceedings Data at 2024 Trademark Scholars Roundtable
