USDCTRAD0020 - Case Type 1

The TTAB is empowered to determine only the right to register trademarks and is not authorized to determine the right to use trademarks, nor may it decide broader questions of trademark infringement or unfair competition. Within its authority, the TTAB acts as an appellate tribunal reviewing refusals of the USPTO to issue federal trademark registrations, and the TTAB acts as a trial forum to adjudicate inter partes proceedings. Responses to this survey are confined to the TTAB's inter partes proceedings. Inter partes proceedings before the TTAB include: oppositions to federal registration of trademarks, petitions to cancel existing federal trademark registrations, and proceedings involving applications for concurrent use registrations of trademarks. (In a concurrent use registration proceeding the TTAB determines whether one or more applicants is entitled to a restricted registration, with conditions and limitations fixed by the Board as to mode or place of use of applicant's mark.) An additional type of inter partes proceeding authorized by statute, interferences, is obsolete and so is not considered in these responses.