Office action

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For Wikipedia:Office actions, see WP:OFFICE.

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An office action is a document written by an examiner in a patent or trademark examination procedure and mailed to an applicant ^[1] for a patent or trademark. The expression is used in many jurisdictions.

1 United States
- 1.1 Trademark law
- 1.2 Patent law
2 References and notes
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] United States

[edit] Trademark law

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Trademark#Establishing trademark rights. (Discuss)

This section does not cite any references or sources. (September 2007)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

In United States trademark law, an office action is a rejection of an application to register a trademark issued by an examiner for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)^[2]. Typically, an office action will comprise one or both of two elements. The first element is the category of "informalities", matters such as an inadequate sample to show use of the mark, providing insufficient information with respect to the nature of the entity seeking the mark (for example, failing to name the partners in a partnership), or providing insufficient information for the examiner to determine what, exactly, the goods and services provided by the applicant are.

The second possible element of an office action are actual basis for rejection of the mark itself, the most frequent being likelihood of confusion with an existing registered mark and genericness or descriptiveness of the mark for which registration is sought. Rarely, a mark will be rejected as "immoral or scandalous", usually if it contains sexually suggestive terms, or vulgarities.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Patent law

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with patent prosecution. (Discuss)

In United States patent law, an office action is a document written by a patent examiner in response to a patent application after the examiner has examined the application^[3]^[4]. The office action cites prior art and gives reasons why the examiner has allowed (approved) the applicant's claims and/or rejected the claims.

FAOM is a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) acronym for "First Office Action On the Merits".

[edit] References and notes

^ "Changes to Practice for Continued Examination Filings, Patent Applications Containing Patentably Indistinct Claims, and Examination of Claims in Patent Applications," 72 Federal Register 46716 (August 21, 2007)
^ Trademarks - how to respond
^ Patent Prosecution (BitLaw)
^ Intellectual Property- INVENTORS Committee: Short Description of the Patent Process