Your Trademark Registration Can Be Cancelled for "Token Use" — Just Ask Everwise Credit Union

In April 2026, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) issued a precedential decision cancelling a credit union's federal trademark registration — not because someone else owned the mark, but because the credit union never genuinely used it in the first place

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The case is In re Everwise Credit Union (Reexam. No. 2023-100533R). Everwise had registered EVERWISE CREDIT UNION and, by the deadline to file its Statement of Use, the mark appeared on the company's website. The problem: the website listing was a placeholder for a rebrand that didn't actually launch until two months later. The Board called it what it was — token use designed to reserve rights in the mark, not bona fide use in U.S. commerce. Registration cancelled.

Why this matters

This wasn't an opposition or a lawsuit. It was a reexamination — a proceeding created by the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 that lets anyone (or the USPTO itself) challenge a registration within five years of issuance on the ground that the mark wasn't actually in use when it should have been. The petitioner files evidence of nonuse, the USPTO institutes the proceeding, and the registrant has to prove real use as of the relevant date — the filing date for use-based applications, or the Statement of Use deadline for intent-to-use applications.

Everwise is the roadmap case. It tells challengers exactly what a winning nonuse petition looks like, and it tells registrants exactly what won't survive one.

How to apply it in practice

• Don't file a weak Statement of Use to preserve your priority date. If your mark isn't genuinely in use in U.S. commerce by the SOU deadline, filing a thin SOU with a placeholder specimen is worse than useless — it creates a registration that can be cancelled for the next five years. In many cases, filing a fresh intent-to-use application is the safer move.

• Keep real specimens. Sales records, advertising showing the mark used with the actual goods or services, screenshots showing genuine commercial use — not mockups, not "coming soon" pages.

• Audit your portfolio. If you own registrations approaching the five-year mark, pressure-test the use evidence behind each one now, before a competitor does it for you.

This post is for general information only and isn't legal advice.