Challengers Won Most TTAB Oppositions in Q3 2025 — and Big Tech Filed a Late-September Wall of Them

Quarterly TTAB Report | USPTO TTAB data through September 30, 2025

When the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decided an opposition on the merits this quarter, the party bringing the challenge usually won. Q3 2025 produced 1,242 sustained opposition decision entries against 774 dismissed or denied — opposers prevailing on the named merits outcomes by better than three to two. Cancellation petitioners did even better in proportion: 447 grants to 288 denials. The register is not a coin flip. If you bring a well-pleaded challenge to the Board and stay in long enough to get a decision, the house odds favor you.

The other story of the quarter is who was filing. In the final week of September, Amazon, Apple, Nike, and Google stacked oppositions and extensions onto the docket almost day over day — a coordinated end-of-quarter enforcement push from the same handful of names that dominate the watch lists every quarter.

When the Board reaches a merits decision in an opposition, the opposer wins more often than not. The expensive part isn't winning — it's surviving discovery long enough to get there.

— Howard Katzenberg, Founder, GleanMark

Total filings rose 2.4% to 6,718, but the headline number buries the lead. The growth was almost entirely in extensions of time to oppose — the pre-litigation watch-and-wait filings — even as fully filed oppositions and ex parte appeals both fell. Brand owners are reserving more options without committing to more fights.

1. Filing Volume

Proceeding Type	Type Code	Current Quarter Filings	Prior Quarter Filings	QoQ Change
Extensions of Time to Oppose	EXT	3,053	2,785	+268
Oppositions	OPP	2,002	2,047	-45
Ex Parte Appeal	EXA	908	998	-90
Cancellations	CAN	748	727	+21
Miscellaneous	MIS	6	2	+4
Concurrent Use	CNU	1	4	-3
Quarter Total	All Types	6,718	6,563	+155 (+2.4%)

The 2.4% rise is real but lopsided. Extensions of time to oppose added 268 filings and supplied more than the entire quarterly increase by themselves; without them, the docket would have shrunk. Oppositions slipped, ex parte appeals fell harder, and only cancellations nudged up among the contested categories.

That pattern matters more than the topline. An extension of time to oppose is the cheapest, lowest-commitment move a brand owner can make — it buys time to investigate, negotiate, or simply keep a competitor's application from registering while counsel decides whether the fight is worth it. We think the divergence likely reflects caution rather than aggression: owners are parking more applications on watch while declining to convert as many of them into full oppositions, the posture you'd expect when legal budgets are scrutinized and settlement is cheaper than trial.

2. Outcomes by Proceeding Type

Proceeding Type	Type Code	Proceedings with Decisions	Decision Entries	Sustained	Granted	Dismissed or Denied	Affirmed	Reversed	Moot	Reconsideration	Other Procedural Rulings
Oppositions	OPP	2,026	2,059	1,242	0	774	0	0	2	2	39
Ex Parte Appeal	EXA	769	836	0	0	254	73	3	26	355	125
Cancellations	CAN	759	767	0	447	288	0	0	5	1	26
Concurrent Use	CNU	6	6	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	5
Extensions of Time to Oppose	EXT	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0

Read the opposition line first, because it carries the quarter's clearest signal. Of 2,059 opposition decision entries, sustained outcomes — opposer wins — outnumbered dismissed-or-denied outcomes 1,242 to 774. Cancellations told the same story in different vocabulary: 447 petitions granted against 288 denied. In both contested categories, the party attacking the registration came out ahead.

Ex parte appeals are a different animal and should never be lumped in. Here the applicant is fighting the examining attorney, not another company, and the numbers are brutal for applicants: 73 refusals affirmed, just 3 reversed. The 355 reconsideration entries and 125 other procedural rulings are housekeeping, not merits, and counting them as wins or losses would distort the picture. The one number an applicant should sit with is 73 to 3 — when an examiner's refusal reaches the Board, it almost always sticks.¹

3. Terminations

Proceeding Type	Type Code	Proceedings Terminated	Terminated with Decision	Terminated with No Decision
Extensions of Time to Oppose	EXT	2,966	0	2,966
Oppositions	OPP	1,960	1,927	33
Ex Parte Appeal	EXA	933	224	709
Cancellations	CAN	586	389	197
Concurrent Use	CNU	5	5	0
Miscellaneous	MIS	4	0	4

The termination data quietly contradicts the win-rate story above, and the contradiction is the point. Oppositions terminated overwhelmingly with a decision (1,927 of 1,960), but every extension terminated without one — 2,966 of 2,966, exactly as a procedural placeholder should. Ex parte appeals split the other way: 709 of 933 ended with no decision, meaning most applicants abandoned or resolved the application before the Board ever ruled.

So the sustained-versus-dismissed scoreboard describes the cases that go the distance, not the typical dispute. Most fights never get a merits ruling. No-decision terminations reflect settlements, withdrawals, abandonments, and extension close-outs — they are not losses for anyone, and treating them as such is the most common mistake in reading this data.

4. High-Profile Proceedings

Filing Date	Brand / Owner	Proceeding	Proceeding Type	Status
2025-09-30	Amazon Technologies, Inc.	91302068	Oppositions	Terminated
2025-09-29	Apple Inc.	91302017	Oppositions	Terminated
2025-09-30	Nike, Inc.	91302053	Oppositions	Terminated
2025-09-30	Google LLC	99055823	Extensions of Time to Oppose	Terminated
2025-09-26	Pineapple Brands LLC	92089616	Cancellations	Terminated

The notable filings clustered in the last week of the quarter, and the same four corporate names did most of the clustering.

Amazon was the most active, filing oppositions 91302068, 91302069, 91301999, and 91302001 across September 24–30, plus extension 98811581. The cadence is a watch-and-convert pipeline: hold applications open with extensions, then drop oppositions on the subset that clears the internal threshold for a fight.

Apple filed three oppositions in a single day — 91302017, 91302037, and 91302035, all on September 29. A same-day cluster of three is a portfolio sweep, not three coincidences; it reads like a scheduled clearance review converting several flagged marks at once.

Nike paired a September 30 opposition (91302053) with an earlier September 25 opposition (91301967) and a September 24 extension (99022621) — the classic mix of one mark it's ready to fight and another it's keeping on the hook.

Google stayed in pre-litigation posture entirely, filing extensions 99055823 and 99081886 rather than full oppositions in this set. The practitioner takeaway: an extension from an owner this size is itself a warning shot. By the time a notice of opposition appears, the decision to fight has usually already been made.

Outside Big Tech, Pineapple Brands LLC ran a cancellation (92089616) — a reminder that the contested docket is not just blue-chip names policing watch lists but smaller owners attacking registrations already on the books.

5. Notable Decisions

Decision Date	Proceeding	Parties	Proceeding Type	Decision
2025-09-30	91271261	OMS Investments, Inc. v. Urban-Gro, Inc.	Oppositions	Dismissed with prejudice
2025-09-30	91288187	Gospel Music Workshop Of America, Inc. v. LaShone Cleveland	Oppositions	Sustained
2025-09-30	91289395	Daphnee Lagredelle v. Marie Junie St. Clair Bernard	Oppositions	Opposition dismissed
2025-09-30	91289620	Kenneth JP Hartzer v. Willis Humphrey	Oppositions	Sustained on summary judgment
2025-09-30	91291971	Irie Poetry Shop Ltd Co v. Selective Marketplace Limited	Oppositions	Sustained
2025-09-30	91294100	Beauty Pie Limited v. Dreamwell, Ltd.	Oppositions	Dismissed with prejudice
2025-09-30	91295625	Neptune Operations Ltd. v. The Board of Regents of the University of Texas System	Oppositions	Sustained
2025-09-30	91295923	Campbell-Wright Investments, Inc. v. Prive Properties LLC dba Prive Vineyard	Oppositions	Sustained
2025-09-30	91297027	Bear Cloud Coffee LLC v. Jeffrey M. Archipley	Oppositions	Sustained
2025-09-30	91297557	Oppenheimer Pty Ltd v. Taylor Fresh Foods, Inc.	Oppositions	Sustained

The selected decisions resolved on the last day of the quarter and leaned sustained — consistent with the opposer-favorable tilt in the aggregate outcome table, though a small hand-picked set proves nothing on its own.

The most institutionally interesting result is 91295625, where the University of Texas System came out on top. In a prior UT opposition, the university's goods included decals in Class 16 and t-shirts and shirts in Class 25, and the grounds asserted likelihood of confusion, false suggestion of a connection, and dilution. UT runs one of the more aggressive collegiate-licensing enforcement programs in the country, and a sustained opposition here fits a long pattern of the school defending its marks rather than any one-off dispute.

Not everything went the challenger's way. Three named oppositions ended for the applicant: OMS Investments v. Urban-Gro (91271261) and Beauty Pie v. Dreamwell (91294100) were both dismissed with prejudice, and Lagredelle v. St. Clair Bernard (91289395) was dismissed outright. The procedural standout is Hartzer v. Humphrey (91289620), sustained on summary judgment — the opposer never needed a trial. Note that several of these proceedings were filed years before they resolved; the OMS matter dates to 2021. Quarterly outcome counts track decision dates, not filing dates, and conflating the two will mislead you on how fast the Board actually moves.

Practitioner Takeaways

1. A late-quarter extension from Amazon, Apple, Nike, or Google is a warning shot, not noise. These owners reserve options at scale and convert a subset to oppositions. If one of them files an extension against your client's published mark, assume the clearance decision is already underway.

2. The merits favor the challenger — but only if you reach the merits. Opposers led 1,242 to 774 on sustained-versus-dismissed entries, and petitioners led 447 to 288 in cancellations. The cost isn't winning the ruling; it's funding the discovery to get one.

3. If you're an applicant facing an ex parte refusal, recalibrate. The Board affirmed 73 refusals and reversed 3. Appeal when the law is genuinely on your side, not as a reflex.

4. Never read a no-decision termination as a loss. Every one of the 2,966 terminated extensions closed without a decision, by design, and 709 of 933 ex parte appeals terminated the same way. These are docket exits — settlement, withdrawal, abandonment — not scorecards.

5. Watch decision dates, not filing dates. September 30's decision set included a proceeding filed in 2021. Quarterly outcome data measures when the Board ruled, and comparing it against filing volume without that discipline produces nonsense.

Data sourced from USPTO TTAB records and public filings. This report is informational and does not constitute legal advice.

Explore more USPTO data analysis on the GleanMark Insights blog.

Footnotes

1. Two measures appear throughout this report. "Proceedings with Decisions" counts distinct proceedings that received at least one decision entry during the quarter; "Decision Entries" counts the decision records themselves, and a single proceeding can generate more than one. All outcome-category figures (sustained, granted, dismissed/denied, affirmed, reversed, etc.) are decision-entry counts. Figures reflect proceedings as recorded through the report date and will change as cases progress. ↩