Filing a Petition for Cancellation
By Casey Scott McKay ·
This is the working manual for killing a federal registration that should never have issued or that has stopped being valid, from the morning the refusal letter lands to the day the Board enters judgment. Sixteen numbered stages carry the filing, the governing rule, the realistic cost, and the mistake that costs money: reading the registration file instead of the search result, pricing cancellation against the three cheaper instruments that reach the same result, and above all respecting the five-year cliff in 15 U.S.C. 1064(1), which is the single most consequential unextendable deadline in trademark practice. It explains what incontestability actually blocks and what it does not, when a 400-dollar ex parte expungement petition beats a 600-dollar-per-class cancellation, how to name a petitioner that survives a Corcamore entitlement challenge, and how to avoid inviting a compulsory counterclaim against your own asset. You get model language for the caption, the entitlement paragraph, an abandonment count, a statutory nonuse count under Section 14(6), a fraud count pleaded to Rule 9(b), a Section 18 restriction request in the alternative, the prayer for relief, and a pre-filing letter. Two decision trees handle the real forks, a grounds table maps every statutory hook against its deadline and burden of proof, and a master table prices the matter end to end. Two annotated files run the whole way through: a Rhode Island potter attacking a fourteen-year-old incontestable registration for abandonment, and an Austin apparel company clearing a never-used Madrid registration for the price of a deposition transcript.
IP and Technology > Trademarks | Guide | Published 15 January 2026 - Updated 30 July 2026 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Summary. Cancel a registration that shouldn't have issued, or one that is no longer valid — and know which of those two cases you are in before you spend a dollar, because they run on different clocks. Sixteen stages, each with the filing, the rule, the realistic cost, and the trap: reading the registration file rather than the search result, pricing a Board proceeding against the three cheaper instruments that reach the same result, and respecting the five-year cliff in 15 U.S.C. § 1064(1), which is unextendable, untollable, and the most expensive date in trademark practice. You will learn what incontestability actually blocks and what it leaves wide open, when a $400 ex parte expungement petition is strictly better than a $600-per-class cancellation, how to name a petitioner who survives an entitlement challenge, and how not to hand the registrant a compulsory counterclaim against your own portfolio. Model language covers the caption, the entitlement paragraph, an abandonment count, a statutory nonuse count under § 14(6), a fraud count pleaded to Rule 9(b), a § 18 restriction request, the prayer, and the pre-filing letter. Two decision trees, a grounds table with deadlines and burdens, a full cost-and-timeline table, and two annotated files carried from refusal to judgment.
Keywords: petition for cancellation · ttab cancellation · 15 usc 1064 · section 14(3) grounds · five-year cliff · incontestability · ex parte expungement · ex parte reexamination · trademark modernization act · abandonment cancellation · genericness cancellation · entitlement to a statutory cause of action · section 18 restriction · compulsory counterclaim · 37 cfr 2.111 · estta filing · section 2.134 surrender · accelerated case resolution · nonuse cancellation · cancellation cost and timeline
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