It is important to understand that in order to prove use of your trademark (word mark or logo), your trademark has to appear as a brand on your clothing rather than a simple design or picture at the front of a t-shirt.

Please check out our other article talking about specimens of use requirements here.

Warning: technical reading

A large design at the front of a t-shirt, for example, will be considered ornamental use and therefore will not be acceptable to prove use of your trademark as it does not identify your brand but simply serves aesthetic and decorative purposes.

Your trademark, a word mark or a logo, should appear in a place or on a surface where consumers would expect to look to find a clothing brand. Some examples include but are not limited to labels or prints inside of a clothing item, separate hang tags and/or labels on packaging or container.

Some examples of acceptable branding:

Inside label:

Logo on the breast area of a t-shirt/shirt:

Separate hang tag:

Label on packaging:

And below is one example of unacceptable branding where the logo or text mark is shown as a really large design in front of a sweatshirt so that it is not associated with a trademark name but serves an ornamental or decorative purpose.

If you run an online retail store, you may want to file your trademark in class 35.

For class 35, online retail store, an acceptable proof of use will be a screenshot of website that has your trademark on it. You should put your trademark (word mark or logo), in top-left corner of the website (you can also put it in a different place but the brand should be prominently shown and associated with a trademark name).

The website should have a display of items available for sale and a checkout functionality. Checkout functionality doesn’t need to be sophisticated, but there should be a way to order products online (even by email or phone will be acceptable). In most cases, an online shopping cart will work.

A good example of an online retail store is amazon.com or ebay.com

As you must have noticed by now, the acceptable specimens of use of a trademark in Classes 25 and 35 must show actual products or depict retail services as they can be found or seen by consumers in the marketplace – be it in physical stores or in websites of online stores.

The specimens demonstrate how purchasers connect the products and/or services to your branding so that they readily know and identify your products and services as opposed to those of other businesses. They must function to identify you as the source of the products and services rather than just being merely a design or ornament on the products and commercial materials,

For the USPTO purposes, specimens are submitted electronically so they can be a photograph, scanned copy, screen capture, or printout of the physical specimen of use. The screenshots of webpages must show the URL and date they were accessed or printed in order to be accepted.

The specimens must not be mere mock-ups. They must not have been edited, computerized or enhanced. They must be plain photographs taken against an ordinary background. By experience, we noticed that examiners tend to reject photos of clothing, shoes, and other products that have a white background because mock-up product images usually have white backgrounds.

A screenshot or printout of a webpage showing a clothing item for sale must display the trademark on or in close proximity to the clothing item, the price, and a shopping-cart button.

Photo of a counter display must show your trademark side-by-side your shoes and apparel products as they are actually displayed in stores where they are sold.

Long story short, your specimens must be real-life demonstrations of how your trademark appears on your products or depicted in relation to your services.

To learn more about Specimens of Use click here and here.