Once in a while you stumble across an entry in the USPTO’s trademark database that is marked as pending despite a decades-old filing date, and which covers all the classes, without any description of good/services:

It turns out that these are 6ter Listings are made pursuant to 6ter of the Paris Convention under which members agreed not to register “armorial bearings, flags, and other State emblems, of the countries of the Union, official signs and hallmarks indicating control and warranty adopted by them, and any imitation from a heraldic point of view.” To facilitate the refusal, the USPTO enters them into the trademark database, even though they are not trademarks, so that Examiner’s can find them, and make the appropriate refusal.

These listings can be found by searching SN:89* in the USPTO trademark database. As of July 10, there are 3,194 such listings. They include listings from the U.S. government as well as from foreign governments.

TMEP 1205.02 explains:

1205.02 Article 6ter of the Paris Convention
The United States is a member of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, as revised at Stockholm on July 14, 1967, the members of which constitute a Union for the protection of industrial property. Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property art. 6ter, Mar. 20, 1883, https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text/288514 (accessed on March 25, 2025).

Under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention, the contracting countries have agreed to refuse or to invalidate the registration, and to prohibit the unauthorized use as trademarks or as elements of trademarks, of armorial bearings, flags, and other State emblems of the member countries, official signs and hallmarks indicating control and warranty adopted by member countries, and any imitation from a heraldic point of view. The provision applies equally to armorial bearings, flags, other emblems, abbreviations, and names of international intergovernmental organizations of which one or more countries of the Union are members, except for those that are already the subject of international agreements in force, intended to ensure their protection (e.g., “Red Cross” and emblems protected by the Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949).

Under Article 6ter, each member country or international intergovernmental organization (IGO) may communicate armorial bearings, emblems, official signs and hallmarks indicating warranty and control, and names and abbreviations of IGOs to the IB, who will transmit the communications to the other member countries. Within twelve months from receipt of the notification, a member country may transmit its objections, through the IB.

When the USPTO receives notifications from the IB under Article 6ter, the USPTO searches its records for conflicting marks, although the requests are not subjected to a full examination by an examining attorney or published for opposition. If the USPTO determines that a designation should be entered into the USPTO search records to assist USPTO examining attorneys, the designation is assigned a serial number in the “89” series code (i.e., serial numbers beginning with the digits “89,” sometimes referred to as “non-registrations”). Information about the designation should be discovered in an examining attorney’s search.

Refusal of Marks Notified Under Article 6ter

Depending on the nature and use of the mark, §§2(a) and 2(b) of the Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. §§1052(a) and 1052(b), may bar registration of marks comprised in whole or in part of designations notified pursuant to Article 6ter and to which the United States has transmitted no objections. A refusal under §2(d) of the Trademark Act is not appropriate. The issue is not whether the marks are confusingly similar, but whether registration of the mark would violate §§2(a) or 2(b) of the Trademark Act.

For example, it may be appropriate for the examining attorney to refuse registration under §2(a) of the Act on the ground that the mark comprises matter that may falsely suggest a connection with a national symbol of a member country or an international intergovernmental organization. See TMEP §1203.03(b). It may be appropriate to refuse registration under §2(b) of the Act if the proposed mark comprises a flag, coat of arms, or other similar insignia. See TMEP §1204. In some instances, it may be appropriate to refuse registration under §§1, 2 (preamble), and 45 of the Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. §§1051, 1052, and 1127, on the ground that the subject matter would not be perceived as a trademark. For service mark applications, §3 of the Act, 15 U.S.C. §1053, should also be cited as a basis for refusal.

WIPO also keeps an Article 6ter database, which can be found here:https://www.wipo.int/en/web/article-6ter/.

Effective January 18, 2025, the USPTO filing fees for trademark applications are going up, as illustrated  on this chart:

 In addition, there is a new $100 surcharge per class if any of the twenty “Requirements for a base application,” as provided in 37 CFR § 2.22(1) through (20) is omitted, and an additional fee of $200 for each additional group of 1,000 characters in the free-form text box beyond the first 1,000 characters.  Thus a mistake or omission can bump the fees for a new single application to $450, and a lengthy description of goods and services adds at least another $200.

One way to minimize government filing fees are to make sure all of the requirements for a base application are met.  This may be more difficult than it sounds, because it includes providing a description of the mark, describing all colors in the mark and their locations; providing an English translation of any non-English wording, and providing a transliteration of any non-Latin characters, compliance with which is at least somewhat subjective.

Another way to minimize government filing fees is to select the descriptions of goods and services from the Trademark ID Manual (TMNG-IDM).  The ID Manual is often lacking, particularly with respect to modern goods and services. This can be managed with some advance planning – requesting that your goods or services be added to the ID Manual.  This is easily done by emailing the name of requester, the email address of the requester, and the proposed identification (no more than 25 words) to tmidsuggest@uspto.gov.  No more than three proposals should be submitted in a single email, the proposal(s) should be of use to other applicants (and not just the submitter), and proposal should not be for a description that has been rejected by an Examiner.

A final way to minimize government filing fees is to file separate applications for classes using descriptions from the Trademark ID Manual, and classes needed a freeform description of goods and services.

The fees for maintaining issued registrations are also increasing:

On February 13, 2024, the Federal Circuit affirmed the USPTO’s refusal to register the mark CHESTEK LEGAL for failure to comply with the domicile address requirement of 37 C.F.R. §§ 2.32(a)(2) and 2.189.

37 C.F.R. §2.32(a)(2) requires that a trademark application include “[t]he name, domicile address, and email address of each applicant.” While 37 C.F.R. § 2.189 requires that “An applicant or registrant must provide and keep current the address of its domicile, as defined in § 2.2(o) [The term domicile as used in this part means the permanent legal place of residence of a natural person or the principal place of business of a juristic entity.” The USPTO explained that that these rules we created to combat “the growing problem of foreign individuals, entities, and applicants failing to comply with U.S. law.”

Pamela Chestek, a well-known and highly regarded trademark practitioner, author and commentator, provided the address where she receives business mail: “PO BOX 2492, RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA UNITED STATES 27602. Her website identifies a physical address of 300 Fayetteville St, Raleigh, NC 27601, which turns out to be the Raleigh, N.C. Post Office. This was not good enough for the USPTO, which could not sleep at night until it knew where Pamela slept at night.

On appeal, Chestek argued that the domicile address requirement was improperly promulgated for two independent reasons and that the Board’s decision enforcing the domicile address requirement should therefore be vacated. First, Chestek first argued that the USPTO was required to comply with the requirements of notice-and-comment rulemaking under 5 U.S.C. § 553 but failed to do so because the proposed rule did not provide notice of the domicile address requirement adopted in the final rule. Second, Chestek argued that the domicile address requirement is arbitrary and capricious
because the final rule failed to offer a satisfactory explanation for the domicile address requirement and failed to consider important aspects of the problem it purports
to address, such as privacy.

The Federal Circuit rejected Chestek’s first argument because § 553(b)(A) does not require the formalities of notice-and-comment for “interpretative rules, general statements of policy, or rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice.”

The Federal Circuit rejected Chestek’s second argument because the regulations were not arbitrary or capricious but were adopted the domicile address requirement as part of a larger regulatory scheme to require foreign trademark applicants, registrants, or parties to a
trademark proceeding to be represented by U.S. counsel. The Federal Circuit said that because the USPTO would need to know an applicant’s domicile address to determine if the U.S. counsel requirement applied, it reasonably required all applicants to provide their domicile address. The USPTO’s justification for all applicants to provide a domicile address is therefore at least reasonably discernable when considered in the full context of the U.S. attorney requirement and the decision to condition that requirement on domicile.

The USPTO has announced a number of fee increases to “better serve” its trademark constituency.  The majority of the fee increases punish those Luddites among us who still make paper filings.  The fees for paper filings are increasing between 60% and 200%.  However the fee increases also impact e-filers, with increases ranging from 23% and 100%, and the introduction of new fees for requesting an extension of time to file a Notice of Opposition.

On the positive side, in addition to 37 fee increases and four new fees to better serve us, the USPTO is lowering the fee to electronically file a request for extension of time to file a Statement of Use from $150 to $125.  Why it costs $125 to get an extension, and still only $100 to examine an actual Statement of Use filing, seems less “to better align fees with full costs, ” and more like charging what the market will bear.

As you pay higher fees for your trademark filings, take comfort in the fact that you are being better served.