A US trademark registration is not permanent on its own. The first time it has to be defended against the calendar is the Section 8 declaration of continued use, and the window is narrower than most people expect: it opens on the fifth anniversary of the registration date and closes on the sixth.
Not the filing date. Not the publication date. The registration date, printed on the certificate.
The window, precisely
- Opens on the fifth anniversary of registration. A declaration filed a day early is refused, and the fee is not refunded.
- Closes on the sixth anniversary.
- Grace period of six months after that, with an additional fee per class.
- After the grace period the registration cancels.
What cancellation actually means
This is the part worth being blunt about. An abandoned application can be revived — there is a two-month petition window and an unintentional-delay standard that most petitions meet. A cancelled registration has no equivalent. There is no petition, no restoration, no discretionary relief.
The mark can be filed again, but it re-enters the queue as a new application with a new filing date. For a brand that has been in use for six years, the loss is rarely the filing fee. It is the priority date — the thing that decides who wins against anyone who filed in the intervening years.
What has to be in the filing
Three things, and the second is where most refusals originate:
- A declaration that the mark is in use in commerce on the goods and services in the registration.
- A specimen showing that use, for each class. A specimen that would have passed at registration will not necessarily pass now, because the USPTO is looking at use as it exists today.
- The fee, per class.
If the mark is no longer used on some of the listed goods, those have to be deleted. Declaring use that does not exist is the kind of error that surfaces years later in a cancellation proceeding, when the registration matters most.
Why this deadline gets missed
It is not usually ignorance of the rule. Three things do the damage.
Six years is longer than most systems remember. The deadline is set by an event that happened before the current docketing software was installed, often before the current staff arrived.
The courtesy reminder is not a legal requirement. The USPTO sends one, and it says explicitly that failure to receive it does not excuse a missed filing. It goes to the correspondent of record — so a change of firm, a change of email, or an attorney who has left takes the reminder with them, silently.
Nothing happens on the day it is missed. There is no refusal, no notice, no adverse event. The registration simply stops being enforceable at some later point when someone finally looks.
How to actually file it
The declaration, what the USPTO accepts as a specimen, and where refusals come from: the Section 8 filing guide.
Filing Section 8 and Section 15 together
The Section 15 declaration of incontestability becomes available after five years of continuous use, which overlaps the Section 8 window almost exactly. Most practitioners file them as one combined declaration, and there is little reason not to: Section 15 is optional but it removes the most common grounds for attacking a registration later.
How Sealvo calculates it
From the registration date on the register, not from anything typed in. The same engine handles the Section 71 affidavit that applies instead when a registration arrived through the Madrid Protocol, and the grace period is treated as part of the clock rather than a separate one — a mark inside its grace window is still live, and still saveable.