How to File a Trademark Statement of Use Extension: Deadlines and Cause

A trademark Statement of Use extension buys you another six months to prove you’re using your mark in commerce, and you can stack up to five of them for a maximum of 36 months from the date your Notice of Allowance issued. Each request costs $125 per class of goods or services when filed electronically through TEAS. The first extension is granted on request; every one after that requires you to explain, with specifics, why the mark still isn’t in commercial use.¹

When You Can File

Extensions apply only to applications filed under Section 1(b) of the Trademark Act, the intent-to-use basis. Once your application clears examination and survives the 30-day publication window without opposition, the USPTO issues a Notice of Allowance. That notice is not a registration. It opens a six-month window in which you must either file a Statement of Use or a Request for Extension.¹

There is one timing trap. Between the date the examining attorney approves your application for publication and the date the Notice of Allowance actually issues, the USPTO will not accept a Statement of Use, an Amendment to Allege Use, or an extension request tied to those filings. That gap is the blackout period. Wait until your application status reads “Notice of Allowance issued” before submitting anything use-related.²

How Many Extensions You Get

The statute permits five extension requests after the Notice of Allowance, each adding six months. Combined with the initial six-month period, that is 36 months total from the Notice of Allowance date to file a Statement of Use.¹

The first request is straightforward. You pay the fee and submit a verified statement that you still intend to use the mark; the USPTO does not ask why. Requests two through five must include a good cause statement in addition to the verified statement.³

What Good Cause Looks Like

Good cause is not defined by a checklist, but generic language will not work. The examining attorney is looking for concrete efforts toward commercial use. Explanations that typically satisfy the standard include ongoing product development or manufacturing, waiting on regulatory approval, working to establish distribution or retail channels, and negotiating licensing agreements. “We plan to launch soon” is not enough. Each request after the first also needs its own fresh verified statement of continuing intent.³

What Goes in the Request

Every extension request contains the same core pieces:

The application serial number, which appears on any correspondence from the USPTO.
The filing fee of $125 per class of goods or services for electronic filing.⁴
A verified statement that you still have a genuine intention to use the mark in commerce for the goods or services in the application.³
A good cause statement, if this is your second through fifth extension.

If your application covers multiple classes, you pay per class for each class you want to keep alive. Submit a partial fee without telling the USPTO which classes to drop and it will apply your payment starting with the lowest-numbered class, deleting the rest.³

Who Can Sign

The USPTO limits signatories to three categories: the individual owner of the mark, an officer or principal of the business entity that owns it (such as a president, general partner, or LLC principal), or a U.S.-licensed attorney of record. If the signing attorney is not already the attorney of record in the file, they must identify their law firm and bar admission.⁵

You cannot enter someone else’s signature. Electronic signatures on USPTO trademark filings take a specific format: your name typed between two forward slashes, like /Jane Smith/. That string is your legal signature.⁶

Filing Through TEAS

Extension requests are filed through the Trademark Electronic Application System on the USPTO website. TEAS walks you through the serial number, filing basis, class selection, and verified statement. Before the signature page, the system runs an automated check for missing fields. After signing, you are routed to payment; once the fee processes, you get a confirmation email with a timestamp. The filing typically appears in the public database within a few weeks.

Each request must be filed before the current period expires. If your Notice of Allowance issued on January 15, the first window closes on July 15; an approved extension pushes the next deadline to January 15 the following year. The USPTO does not send reminders. Missing a deadline by one day can abandon the application, so keep every date on a calendar you actually check.

The Insurance Extension

There is a useful strategy called the insurance extension: file an extension request at the same time as, or shortly after, your Statement of Use, within the same six-month period. If the examining attorney later rejects the Statement of Use for a defect, you already have another six months to file a corrected one instead of watching the statutory clock run out during the back-and-forth.⁷

If the insurance extension isn’t your first overall, it needs a good cause statement. The USPTO accepts a specific formulation for this scenario: that you believe you have made valid use of the mark, that you are filing a Statement of Use, and that you need additional time to file a new one if the current submission proves fatally defective. That particular explanation may be used only once.⁷

When You’re Only Ready on Some Classes

If your application covers several classes and you can prove commercial use for some but not others, you don’t have to choose between filing a Statement of Use for everything and extending for everything. A request to divide splits the application into a parent and one or more child applications. You file the Statement of Use for the classes that are ready, and the child continues through the extension process for the classes that aren’t.

The divisional fee is $100 per child application created when filed electronically.⁸ When filing a Statement of Use and a request to divide together, use the Allegation of Use form rather than the standalone Request to Divide form, provided you are only creating one child application.⁹

If You Miss the Deadline

Miss a deadline and the application is abandoned, but revival is sometimes possible. You must file a petition to revive within two months of the date on the Notice of Abandonment. If you never received that notice, you have two months from the date you learned about the abandonment, and no later than six months after the abandonment date in the USPTO system.¹⁰

The petition needs a signed statement that the delay was unintentional and a $250 electronic filing fee. You must also include either a Statement of Use with its $150-per-class fee or an extension request with fees covering every extension period you missed.⁴

One hard limit governs everything: if three years pass from the Notice of Allowance without a Statement of Use, the application is permanently dead. No petition revives it after that. You can only claim non-receipt of a specific Notice of Allowance once, so check the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval system on your own schedule rather than trusting email.¹⁰

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1051 – Application for Registration; Verification – Section: Verified Statement That Trademark Is Used in Commerce
2
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Intent to Use (ITU) Forms
3
eCFR. 37 CFR 2.89 – Extensions of Time for Filing a Statement of Use
4
United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO Fee Schedule
5
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Request for Extension of Time to File a Statement of Use
6
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Electronic Signatures 37 CFR 1.4(d)(4)
7
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Maximizing Use of Insurance Extension When Filing Statement of Use
8
United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO Fee Schedule
9
United States Patent and Trademark Office. TEAS Request to Divide Application
10
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Reviving an Abandoned Application