If you’re an applicant or registrant on the receiving end of a TTAB complaint, the first date to calendar is the deadline for filing an answer or filing a motion to dismiss in lieu of an answer. If you care about your trademark, you should lawyer up promptly and make sure not to blow this deadline. Shortly after the answer is due, the parties will need to conduct a mandatory discovery conference which will discuss a number of topics, including settlement. If you can at least cover these first two deadlines, you’ll be in good shape to figure out your strategy for the proceeding, including the possibility of an early settlement which will obviously keep down legal costs. Since these proceedings can become quite expensive in a short amount of time, a TTAB defendant may be tempted to simply forfeit the case without putting up a fight. It would be prudent, however, to consider how a decision in the TTAB proceeding may come back later to bite you (legalese: any potential legal preclusive effects or estoppel of such a surrender).