Hard External Deadlines
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Currently, responses to Trademark Office Actions are extendable deadlines. Unlike in patent cases where an extension of time may be requested with a late filed response (or a surcharge paid for maintenance fees), in trademark cases the new 3-month deadlines requires some kind of filing--either a full response or an extension of time request. If neither is filed, the application will abandon. Because of this, while the TM responses are technically extendable, they still require some response and so should be docketed accordingly.
I request the extendable deadlines where some action needs to be taken be listed as hard deadlines. This allows the dates to be highlighted in a striking manner on the docket.
We just created additional tasks with 3-month hard deadlines to file an extension of time as a result, but would prefer the default-rule be a hard deadline when the deadline cannot be missed without an application abandoning.