Your identification of goods is indefinite: the smallest refusal, and the one worth thinking hardest about
The examining attorney concluded that the wording describing your goods or services is not specific, definite, clear, accurate and concise enough — usually because it names a category rather than the actual products, or because the class is wrong.
37 C.F.R. §2.32(a)(6) · TMEP §1402.01
What the refusal is really about
Taken alone this is the most routine item on the list. It is a wording problem, and the USPTO publishes an acceptable-identification manual full of pre-approved language.
The reason it deserves real thought is that this wording is the boundary of everything your registration will ever protect, and of everything you can be refused over.
If the same office action also raises a likelihood-of-confusion refusal, the two are connected: the examining attorney is comparing the cited registration against whatever your identification says you sell. Narrowing it to what you actually sell can materially change that comparison — which is why the amendment is usually worth settling before the confusion argument is written.
What the examining attorney weighs
The test applied here: The identification must be specific, definite, clear, accurate and concise.
- whether the wording names the common commercial name of the goods
- whether the class is correct
- that an amendment may clarify but may never broaden the original identification
You can narrow it. You can never widen it — and the ratchet is permanent
An amendment may clarify or narrow the identification you filed. It may never broaden it, and the restriction is one-way and permanent: once you narrow, you cannot go back and reclaim the wider wording later in this application. So the instinct to over-correct — to write something very specific because it will obviously be accepted — quietly gives away scope you paid for and cannot get back. There is also a subtler version of the same mistake. Wording that looks like a clarification can broaden in substance, and phrases like "including but not limited to", "and related goods", or "and the like" reopen the identification rather than pinning it down. Any of those in your amendment is likely to draw another refusal. And whatever you amend to has to match the specimen you filed: if your new wording names goods your specimen does not show, you have traded one refusal for another.
What makes a response stronger
- The exact commercial names of what you sell, as you would print them on an invoice
- The USPTO's own acceptable-identification wording for your category, where it fits what you actually offer
- A check that the amended wording still covers everything your specimen shows
- A check that the amended wording still covers everything you plan to sell under this mark
Your deadline, and the number a lot of pages still get wrong
You have 3 months from the issue date printed on the office action — not from the day the email arrived, and not from the day you opened it. One extension of 3 more months is available for $125, and you have to request it before the original date passes (37 C.F.R. §2.62(a)(2)).
This changed on December 3, 2022. Before that the period was a flat six months, and a great deal of guidance still published online says so. If a page tells you that you have six months by right, it is describing the old rule.
USPTO: if a response is filed after the deadline the application will be abandoned and application fees will not be refunded. That is the whole reason to act on this now rather than in a month.
You are allowed to answer this yourself
If the applicant is domiciled in the United States or one of its territories, you may respond to an office action in your own name. You filed the application yourself; you may answer it yourself. Nothing about a refusal changes that.
If the applicant is domiciled anywhere else, the USPTO requires a US-licensed attorney to represent you. markanswer cannot help in that case and refuses the sale before taking any payment, rather than selling you a document you are not permitted to file.
When to hire a trademark attorney instead
If the correct class is genuinely unclear, if narrowing far enough to clear a confusion refusal would cut into products you actually sell, or if you need to split goods across classes. Those are scope decisions with lasting commercial consequences.
Answering this one in your own name
markanswer drafts the response from your office action and your own answers about your business, organised the way the examining attorney reads it, with a plain statement under every argument of where it is weak and what evidence would help. You review it, correct anything that is not true of you, sign it and file it yourself through TEAS. $149, once. Read a complete one first — it is free.
The other four refusals
This page explains a category of USPTO refusal in general terms. It is not legal advice about your application, and markanswer is not a law firm and never represents anyone before the USPTO. Every citation on this page comes from the same committed authority list the drafting step works from.