Docket Navigator launches TTAB data library: takeaways from almost 9,000 cases so far this year

• Docket Navigator expands trademark coverage to include TTAB filings and outcomes
• Almost 9,000 cancellation, opposition and ex parte appeal proceedings launched this year
• Data analysis reveals most common grounds for granting and denying cancellation petitions

Docket Navigator has expanded its trademark coverage to include filings and outcomes at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB). The latest data reveals that 8,291 cancellation, opposition and ex parte appeal proceedings were filed at the board between 1 January and 25 August 2023. Where petitions for cancellation have been granted, likelihood of confusion has emerged as the most common grounds cited by the board.   

The Docket Navigator litigation analytics platform enables users to interrogate data focused on US patent, copyright, antitrust, trade secret and securities litigation. It also boasts an extensive trademark library, which WTR regularly uses to identify and analyse emerging litigation tends and outcomes. This offering has historically focused on US district court cases involving trademark and Lanham Act claims. This week, the platform has added TTAB data to the library, providing an indispensable resource for tracking the latest challenges to trademark registrations.

Analysis of the 2023 data reveals that, as of 25 August, the TTAB has made 47 trademark registrability determinations in the final decisions of 36 proceedings (33 cancellation and three opposition proceedings).

Of those 47 registrability determinations, 28 found that the petition for cancellation should be granted, while the remaining 19 found that the petition should be denied.

The most common ground for registrability determinations granting cancellation has been likelihood of confusion. This ground has been cited in 16 instances.

Where cancellations requests have been denied, abandonment pips likelihood of confusion as the most common grounds for denial in 2023 to date.

The new TTAB library offering from WTR’s sister platform is now live. As well as enabling users to interrogate the data through customised searches, Docket Navigator’s experienced attorney editors will provide daily summaries of legal decisions in the TTAB through the TTAB Docket Report.

The in-house team analyses final TTAB decisions and provides annotations of the board’s key analysis when making determinations of trademark registrability. The TTAB Docket Report states the grounds on which the board has issued a final decision. These decisions are also tagged with legal issues from a TTAB taxonomy to simplify legal research.

The TTAB Docket Report will enable users to create case alerts for proceedings involving challenges to a registered mark, oppositions to a pending application, or appeals from the registration decision of an examining attorney. The report will also provide a daily list of new proceedings, which includes the parties, the challenged and cited marks, and the grounds on which the marks are being challenged.

Docket Navigator’s attorney editors will also enter final trademark registrability determinations where  more than one ground has been asserted in a petition for cancellation. (Thus, there may be more than one determination per trademark registration and determinations may be overturned or reversed in the same proceeding, or in future appeals to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or the US district courts.)

Current subscribers to the Docket Navigator trademark library will begin to receive the new TTAB Docket Report automatically on release. WTR users can request an extended free trial by using the code ‘WTRTRIAL’.