In short
A USPTO office action carries a response deadline printed on the letter itself. Most refusals can be answered, but an application abandoned for failure to respond is closed and the filing fee is lost. Read the date on your own letter rather than assuming a standard period.
Where your real deadline is
Open your application in TSDR and find the office action document itself. The response date is printed on it. That date, and only that date, governs your file.
Do not assume six months. Response periods have changed in recent years and vary by filing basis, and a date quoted by a service, a forum post or an article — including this one — is not authoritative for your application. The letter is.
If you cannot find the document, the status code tells you where you are: what status 641 means is that an office action has been mailed and a clock is running.
What actually happens when you miss it
The application goes abandoned for failure to respond. Not paused, not flagged — closed.
> The filing fee goes with it. USPTO government fees are not refunded when an application abandons, so a missed deadline costs at least $350 per class on top of losing the position in the queue.
There is a petition to revive for unintentional delay, with its own fee and its own deadline. It is not automatic and it is not guaranteed. It is also more expensive and slower than answering on time would have been.
Why applications die of silence rather than refusals
The refusal itself is usually answerable. Descriptiveness, likelihood of confusion, specimen problems — all of these have established routes to a response, and examiners issue them expecting an answer.
What ends applications is the gap between receiving the letter and deciding what to do about it. People read a refusal, feel it is fatal, put it aside to deal with later, and later arrives after the window has closed.
The refusal is a question, not a verdict. Treating it as a verdict is the expensive mistake.
If you are close to the deadline
Deal with the date first and the argument second. Establish exactly how long you have before you spend an evening researching your refusal type.
Extensions exist in some circumstances and cost a fee. Whether one is available depends on your filing basis and the type of action, and it is worth confirming rather than assuming.
If the response is going to be tight, a narrower answer filed on time beats a comprehensive one filed late. A late response is not a response.
If the date has already passed, the application may be abandoned, but that is not always final. See how reviving an abandoned application works, because the USPTO's window to petition is short.
Frequently asked questions
Read the response date printed on the office action itself in TSDR. Response periods have changed in recent years and vary by filing basis, so do not assume six months and do not rely on a date quoted by anyone, including us.
The application goes abandoned for failure to respond, and the USPTO filing fees already paid are not refunded. A petition to revive for unintentional delay may be possible, with its own fee and deadline, but it is neither automatic nor guaranteed.
Extensions are available in some circumstances and carry a fee. Whether one applies depends on your filing basis and the type of action issued, so confirm against your own letter rather than assuming.
No. A non-final refusal is the examining attorney raising an issue and inviting a response. Many are overcome. What ends applications is usually the deadline passing rather than the substance of the refusal.
You can, and for some procedural issues a clear response is straightforward. Substantive refusals turn on how the legal test applies to your specific facts, which is what an attorney-reviewed response is for. If you are domiciled outside the US, a US-licensed attorney is required.
Our office action response is $299 flat, whatever the refusal turns out to be. The fee does not change with difficulty, so a complicated refusal costs the same as a simple one.
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This article is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Trademark outcomes depend on the specific facts of each application.