Every USPTO trademark deadline, explained
Twelve clocks run against a US trademark. Each one has its own trigger, its own window, and its own consequence for missing it.
A US trademark does not have one deadline. It has a set of them, and they are driven by different events: the registration date drives maintenance, the issue date of an office action drives prosecution, the notice of allowance drives use filings, and an abandonment date drives revival. Miss the wrong one and there is no way back.
The distinction that matters most is between deadlines that can be cured and deadlines that cannot. An abandoned application can be revived within two months. A cancelled registration cannot be — a missed Section 8 ends the registration permanently, and the only route back is a new application at a new priority date.
The USPTO sends courtesy reminders for maintenance filings, and is explicit in writing that failure to receive one does not excuse a missed deadline. They are a convenience, not a docket. Each page below sets out one clock: what starts it, how long it runs, what the grace or extension options are, and what happens on the day after.
Maintaining a registration
These run off the registration date and continue for as long as the registration lives. Missing one cancels it.
- The Section 8 declaration deadlineBetween the fifth and sixth anniversary of registration — then a six-month grace window, and then the registration is gone.
- The Section 9 renewal deadlineDue between the ninth and tenth anniversary, then every ten years — and always filed alongside a Section 8.
- The Section 15 declarationOptional, no deadline, and the only filing that puts a registration largely beyond challenge.
- The Section 71 affidavitWhat a Madrid Protocol registration files instead of a Section 8 — and why using the wrong name is a docketing problem, not a semantic one.
Prosecution and use
These run off an office action, a notice of allowance or a notice of opposition. They decide whether an application ever becomes a registration.
- The office action response deadlineThree months for most applications since December 2022 — a change that caught a lot of dockets still counting to six.
- The statement of use deadlineSix months from the notice of allowance, and up to five extensions after that — thirty-six months is the hard ceiling.
- Extensions of time to file a statement of useFive requests, six months each, and a bar that rises as you use them up.
- Answering a notice of oppositionForty days from institution, and a default judgment if the date passes unanswered.
Recovery and overview
What to do after a deadline has already passed, and how the whole set fits together across a portfolio.
- Petition to revive an abandoned applicationTwo months from the notice of abandonment. It is the shortest window in US trademark practice.
- The trademark maintenance cycleYear six, year ten, and every ten years thereafter — for as long as the mark is in use.
- Madrid Protocol deadlines in the USTwo clocks on different anniversaries — one at the USPTO, one at WIPO — and a docket that tracks only one of them is wrong.
- Every deadline a US trademark can carrySeven statutory clocks, each triggered by a different event, and none of them announced in advance.
These pages describe how USPTO deadlines are calculated. They are not legal advice, and the register is the authority.