From Notice of Allowance to Registration: A Practitioner's Guide to Statements of Use and Extension Requests
By Casey Scott McKay ·
This guide walks a Section 1(b) application from the day the notice of allowance issues to the day the registration certificate arrives, in the order a practitioner actually does the work. It covers docketing the six-month clock and the thirty-six-month outer limit under 15 U.S.C. § 1051(d), the pre-allowance audit that catches ownership and chain-of-title defects while they are still fixable, and the amendment to allege use and blackout period under 37 C.F.R. §§ 2.76 and 2.88. It sets out what use in commerce requires for goods and for services after Aycock, Couture, and Christian Faith Fellowship Church, how to capture specimens that survive In re Siny Corp., and how to choose among filing a statement of use, requesting an extension, deleting goods, and dividing the application. It supplies model good-cause language, a model verification, a decision tree for the fork at the notice of allowance, a government fee table current to 18 January 2025, and an annotated worked example carried from the notice of allowance through a specimen refusal to two registration certificates. It closes with the ten refusals that actually come back on statements of use, the fixes for each, and what to do when a deadline is missed or the outer limit has already run.
IP and Technology > Trademarks | Guide | Published 13 December 2025 - Updated 15 March 2026 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Summary. This guide walks a Section 1(b) application from the day the notice of allowance issues to the day the registration certificate arrives, in the order a practitioner actually does the work. It covers docketing the six-month clock and the thirty-six-month outer limit under 15 U.S.C. § 1051(d), the pre-allowance audit that catches ownership and chain-of-title defects while they are still fixable, and the amendment to allege use and blackout period under 37 C.F.R. §§ 2.76 and 2.88. It sets out what use in commerce requires for goods and for services after Aycock, Couture v. Playdom, and Christian Faith Fellowship Church v. adidas, how to capture specimens that survive In re Siny Corp., and how to choose among filing a statement of use, requesting an extension, deleting goods, and dividing the application. It supplies model good-cause language, a model verification, a decision tree for the fork at the notice of allowance, a government fee table current to 18 January 2025, and an annotated worked example carried from the notice of allowance through a specimen refusal to two registration certificates. It closes with the ten refusals that actually come back on statements of use, the fixes for each, and what to do when a deadline is missed or the outer limit has already run.
Keywords: statement of use · notice of allowance · extension of time to file · intent-to-use application · section 1(b) · specimen of use · amendment to allege use · blackout period · request to divide · use in commerce · good cause showing · 36-month deadline · specimen refusal · petition to revive · uspto trademark fees · dates of first use · itu assignment restriction · insurance extension request · deleting goods and services · trademark registration certificate
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