My trademark is on a shirt, but the Trademark Office said that is merely ornamental and refused my application! What is ornamental use?
Okay, so you have decided that you want to submit a trademark application to register your trademark. Before going through the process of filling out the application and paying the filing fees, it would be beneficial to make sure your intended trademark will qualify under the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) guidelines. In this post, we will go over one common reason why a trademark application would be refused registration – the ornamental use refusal. What is ornamental use? Let us start from the beginning. The purpose of a trademark is to identify the source of the goods, or to tell the consumer (you and I) where the goods come from. Boiled down, trademark law is actually all about the branding of the goods. If a trademark is used in a way that does not actually identify the source of the goods, or the brand of the goods, that use may be “merely ornamental” and the USPTO will refuse to register your application. So, in order to avoid an ornamental use refusal, it ...
