New TTAB Citation Policy

The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board will now permit a party to bring to the TTAB's attention any prior decisions, even those that have not been designated as precedential, as follows:

• The TTAB will continue its current practice of designating all finaldecisions as either precedential or not precedential. Unless specificallydesignated as precedential, an order on a motion should be considered notprecedential.
• The TTAB will continue its practice of considering precedential decisions as binding upon the TTAB.
• A decision designated as not precedential is not binding upon the TTAB butmay be cited for whatever persuasive value it might have.
• Citation to all TTAB decisions should be to the United States PatentQuarterly, if the decision appears therein; otherwise, to a USPTO publicelectronic database. If a non-precedential decision does not appear in theUnited States Patent Quarterly or the USPTO's public electronic databases,the citing party should append a copy of the decision to the motion orbrief in which the decision is cited.
• Decisions of other tribunals may be cited to the extent allowed and forthe purposes permitted by the tribunal that issued the decision.