Filed, and waiting in the queue
Official wording: New application — record initialized, not assigned to examiner
Your application is in the system and holding its filing date. No examining attorney has looked at the substance of your mark yet. Nothing is wrong and there is nothing to answer.
What is actually happening
The USPTO created the record and reserved your filing date, which holds your place against anyone who files something similar after you. Nothing has been examined and nothing has been granted, so do not describe the mark as registered or use the R symbol yet.
How long this lasts
This is the longest quiet stretch of the process and commonly runs for many months. Queue times move with USPTO workload, so treat any specific figure you read online as an estimate. The USPTO publishes current pendency data directly.
The mistake people make here
Going quiet because the status is quiet. USPTO correspondence arrives by email to the address of record. If that address is stale, you can miss the one message that starts a deadline, and the first sign of trouble becomes an abandonment notice months later.
What is worth doing
The risk during this stage is not the USPTO. It is everything outside it: someone adopting a similar name, a marketplace listing copying your brand, a domain or handle being taken. That is the window monitoring is actually for.
Confirm this against your own record
Status code descriptions are administered inside USPTO systems and published wording varies slightly between sources. Your file is the authority. Enter your serial number in TSDR to see your current status, every document filed, and any live deadline.
Open TSDRLooking this up for a client rather than for your own mark? We keep a network of licensed attorneys who review the cases that come through us. It is case-by-case paid work and a free listing — never a referral fee or a cut of anything.
What comes before and after
Status 638
An examining attorney now has your file
Status 640
An office action has been counted, but not sent yet
Status 641
Your non-final office action has been mailed
Status 602
Your application was abandoned for failure to respond
Status 680
The examiner cleared your mark
Status 700
Your mark is registered