US trademark office will now target audits for fake product claims

The US Patent and Trademark Office will start targeting companies for audits if their trademark applications seem suspicious. Before, the office mostly picked companies at random. This means companies can no longer assume they will get away with claiming a trademark for products they don't actually sell.

For years, companies could register a trademark for a long list of products, even if they only sold one or two of them. The US trademark office only audited a small percentage of these claims, and those audits were mostly random. This change means the office can now go after companies that appear to be overstating their product lines, making it harder to squat on trademarks for products they don't intend to sell.