Taking an Ex Parte Appeal: A Practitioner's Guide to TTAB Briefing, Oral Hearing, and Federal Circuit Review
By Casey Scott McKay ·
This is the working manual for taking a trademark application from a final refusal through the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and, if necessary, into court. It runs in fourteen numbered stages, each with the filing, the governing rule, the realistic timeline and cost, and the mistake that costs money: triaging whether the refusal is even appealable, calendaring the three-month window that replaced the old six-month one, choosing among appeal, reconsideration, amendment to the Supplemental Register, division, and refiling, and building the evidentiary record before 37 C.F.R. 2.142(d) closes it. It gives model language you can adapt for the notice of appeal, the request for reconsideration, the statement of issues and its Rule 2.142(c) compliance sentence, a Section 2.20 declaration, an evidentiary objection, and a request for remand. Two decision trees handle the real forks - what to do the week the final action arrives, and what to do the week the Board affirms - and a master cost-and-timeline table prices every step from the $225 notice of appeal to a five-figure civil action in Alexandria. It carries one annotated example, a Portland coffee roaster with a descriptiveness refusal, through every stage, with a second likelihood-of-confusion file used for the consent, division, and remand mechanics. The doctrine lives in the companion article; this document is the sequence of moves.
IP and Technology > Trademarks | Guide | Published 20 February 2026 - Updated 6 July 2026 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Summary. This is the working manual for taking an application from a final refusal through the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and, if it comes to it, into court. Fourteen numbered stages, each with the filing, the governing rule, the realistic timeline and cost, and the mistake that costs money — triaging whether the refusal is appealable at all, calendaring the three-month window that replaced the old six-month one, choosing among appeal, reconsideration, amendment to the Supplemental Register, division, and refiling, and closing the evidentiary record before 37 C.F.R. § 2.142(d) closes it for you. You get model language for the notice of appeal, the request for reconsideration, the statement of issues and its Rule 2.142(c) compliance sentence, a § 2.20 declaration, an evidentiary objection, and a request for remand. Two decision trees handle the real forks — the week the final action arrives, and the week the Board affirms — and a master table prices every step from the $225 notice of appeal to a five-figure civil action in Alexandria. One annotated example, a Portland coffee roaster with a descriptiveness refusal, runs through every stage, with a second likelihood-of-confusion file carrying the consent, division, and remand mechanics. The doctrine lives in the companion article. This is the sequence of moves.
Keywords: ex parte appeal · ttab appeal brief · notice of appeal · request for reconsideration · 37 cfr 2.142 · tbmp 1200 · estta filing · closed record rule · request for remand · oral hearing ttab · supplemental register amendment · request to divide · three month appeal deadline · 15 usc 1071 · federal circuit appeal · section 1071(b) civil action · uspto expenses · statement of issues · trademark prosecution · petition to the director
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