The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) just
issued new rules that directly affect trademark owners. Going
forward, trademark applicants, registrants, and parties to a
proceeding before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board will need to
provide their email address in USPTO filings. The USPTO enacted
this rule to ensure that trademark owners will receive USPTO
correspondence if their attorney of record withdraws and no new
attorney is appointed. The USPTO said it does not intend
to send correspondence directly to trademark owners represented by
attorneys and will instead continue to direct all correspondence to
the attorney of record in those cases.
Unfortunately for trademark owners, unscrupulous third parties
will likely take advantage of this new rule and start to use the
email addresses to spam trademark owners, as they will be publicly
available on the USPTO website. Trademark owners are already
besieged with countless unsolicited and deceptive
