1612.01(a)    Correspondence E-mail Address

Registrants must provide and keep current a valid e-mail address for correspondence. 37 C.F.R. §§2.18(c), 2.23(b), 7.25(a); TMEP §609.01. The registrant’s e-mail address is required even if the registrant has appointed a qualified U.S. attorney, so that the USPTO can contact the registrant if representation ends.

Trademark registrants who are represented by an appointed qualified U.S. attorney may provide an e-mail address of their choice in the owner e-mail field of the TEAS forms. The e-mail address cannot be identical to the listed primary correspondence e-mail address of their attorney. Such e-mail address will not be visible in the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR) system. Only the correspondence e-mail address of the attorney will be visible.

Trademark registrants who are not represented by such an attorney will have a correspondence e-mail address that is identical to the owner address. In either situation, the e-mail address can be a unique e-mail address created specifically for this purpose. The e-mail address of a registrant will be visible in TSDR in the correspondence e-mail address field. To avoid receiving unsolicited communications at a personal or business e-mail address, registrants may wish to create an e-mail address specifically for communication and correspondence related to their trademark filings at the USPTO.

For qualified in-house counsel and attorneys representing themselves in a matter, the TEAS forms will still require two different e-mail addresses: one for the owner e-mail address field and one for the attorney e-mail address field. For technical reasons related to the TEAS forms, these addresses cannot be identical.

Certain treaty filers exempt from e-mail requirement. If the registrant is a national of a country that has acceded to the Trademark Law Treaty, but not to the Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademarks, the requirement to provide the registrant’s e-mail address does not apply. 37 C.F.R. §2.23(c); see TMEP §301.02(a).

See TMEP §§609-609.02(b) and §609.02(d)-(f) regarding establishing and changing the correspondence address.