Trademark Opposition

Opposition is the adversarial stage of trademark law: after a mark is published in the Trade Marks Journal, any person has four months to oppose it (TM-O). The applicant then has two months to counter-state — miss that and the application is abandoned automatically. Evidence rounds by affidavit follow, then a hearing.

Offensively, opposition is the cheapest enforcement you will ever buy — blocking a confusingly similar mark before registration beats litigating against a registered one by an order of magnitude. Defensively, a well-drafted counter-statement keeps genuine applications alive against tactical oppositions. We run journal watches for Brand Shield clients so the four-month windows never pass unseen.