Hi all, I used to work as a trademark paralegal and I can't see...

Hi all,
I used to work as a trademark paralegal and I can't see that there's evidence of any real problem with the US trademark filing. Unlike the Australian trademark databases, with the US one you can look at the correspondence relating to the filing. It's all pretty routine. The examiner found no conflicting marks (all the similar filings are dead cases - cancelled or abandoned). The examiner asked for some clarification of the goods and services description - also routine - and the applicant responded by agreeing to amend the application. The next step was to provide the Australian registration certificate in order to gain filing date priority from the Australian application. The AU registration certificate appears to have been issued relatively recently and the applicant now needs to send a copy of this to the USPTO. A certified copy was requested from IP Australia in June, possibly for this purpose.

Any spanners in the works for the US registration now would need to come out of left field, but in order for anyone to challenge the trademark in any serious manner, they would usually need to have a similar product with a similar name which has been used in the marketplace. Ideally, a company checks all that out before even deciding on a name.

Re: Cvac vs CVAC or CVac...the AU filing was Cvac. The US filing was CVAC, all capitals, but that's usual for the US no matter how you actually use it. Since the AU filing was Cvac, though, it really ought to be used accordingly, as best practice for protecting the trademark.

So the good news...no expensive trademark war would appear to be looming, at least not in the US or Australia, and the US one should be finalised soon-ish.