Learn 2 Read Read 2 Learn LLC

THIS OPINION IS NOT A
PRECEDENT OF THE TTAB
Mailed: October 8, 2026
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
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In re Learn 2 Read Read 2 Learn LLC
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Serial No. 99176400
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Learn 2 Read Read 2 Learn LLC, pro se.1
Rebecca Eubank, Trademark Examining Attorney, Law Office 116,
Heather Schubert, Managing Attorney.
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Before Pologeorgis, Allard, and Lavache,
Administrative Trademark Judges.
Opinion by Lavache, Administrative Trademark Judge:
On Request for Reconsideration
On July 30, 2026, the Board issued a final decision affirming the Examining
Attorney’s refusal to register Applicant’s proposed mark, WORD BANK: WORD
LEARNING PROGRAM, under Trademark Act Section 2(e)(1), on the ground that it
1 The Request for Reconsideration addressed in this order was filed and signed by Guy Lodge,
Managing Member of Learn 2 Read Read 2 Learn LLC. See Trademark Rule 11.14(e), 37
C.F.R. § 11.14(e) (“[A]n individual may appear in a trademark or other non-patent matter . . .
on behalf of . . . [a] firm of which he or she is a member . . . .”).

Serial No. 99176400
2
is merely descriptive of Applicant’s identified goods and services in International
Classes 16 and 41.2
On August 21, 2026, Applicant filed a request for reconsideration of the Board’s
final decision under Trademark Rule 2.144, 37 C.F.R. § 2.144.3 “‘Generally, the
premise underlying a request for reconsideration . . . is that, based on the evidence of
record and the prevailing authorities, the Board erred in reaching the decision it
issued . . . .’” In re Berkeley Lights, Inc., No. 88895703, 2022 TTAB LEXIS 382, at *2-
3 (quoting TRADEMARK TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD MANUAL OF PROCEDURE (TBMP)
§ 543 (2022)). Thus, “a request for reconsideration ‘normally should be limited to a
demonstration that based on the evidence properly of record and the applicable law,
the Board’s ruling is in error and requires appropriate change.’” Id.
Here, Applicant argues that the Board erred in its decision by (1) stating that
“Applicant has not identified what the proposed mark’s ‘unified, source-identifying
commercial impression’ is”;4 (2) noting that Applicant had not made certain
arguments regarding its evidence concerning the proposed mark’s commercial
impression but failing to provide Applicant an opportunity to present those
2 Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE. The TTABVUE citations in this opinion refer to entries in
the Board’s electronic docket. The number preceding the TTABVUE designation is the docket
entry number and any numbers following indicate the relevant page numbers within the
docket entry.
The subject application, Serial No. 99176400, was filed May 8, 2025, based on an allegation
of a bona fide intention to use the mark in commerce, under Trademark Act Section 1(b),
15 U.S.C. § 1051(b).
3 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE.
4 Id. at 3 (quoting Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE 11).

Serial No. 99176400
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arguments;5 (3) relying on Applicant’s own statements regarding its goods and
services to find descriptiveness, but discounting other evidence of Applicant’s
marketplace use and the proposed mark’s potential commercial impression;6 (4)
indicating, without evidentiary support, that “‘word bank’ could also be descriptive of
something that facilitates an ‘internal storage of language’”;7 (5) concluding that, on
remand, the Examining Attorney had adequately reviewed Applicant’s arguments
concerning the Section 2(e)(1) refusal8 and “treat[ing] repetition of the original refusal
as support for the conclusion that the substantive response challenging that refusal
was considered.”9
I. Arguments Concerning Commercial Impression
We begin with the first four points listed above, as they all relate to the final
decision’s discussion of the proposed mark’s commercial impression. Applicant
asserts that the final decision is contradictory because it states that Applicant did not
identify what the “unified, source-identifying commercial impression” of the proposed
mark is, but then “immediately acknowledges Applicant’s marketplace evidence
explaining that Applicant chose WORD BANK to: ‘represent[] a child’s growing
internal store of language.’”10 According to Applicant, the record contained evidence
5 Id. at 11-12.
6 Id. at 6-8.
7 Id. at 9-12 (quoting Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE 12 n.31).
8 Id. at 14-18.
9 Id. at 24.
10 Id. at 3-4.

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4
of the intended commercial impression of the mark and Applicant’s “position did not
become unidentified merely because Applicant did not restate it in the talismanic
form, ‘this is the commercial impression.’”11 Applicant further argues that the Board
should not have “treated the absence of further articulation [of its arguments] as a
substantive deficiency” without providing Applicant an opportunity to provide that
“further articulation” through additional briefing.12
We find no error in the decision on any of these points. The fact remains that
Applicant did not specifically identify the nature of the asserted commercial
impression in its argument that “when consumers encounter the entire mark in the
appropriate context, it ‘creates a unified, source-identifying commercial impression’
that would be perceived not as descriptive, but as a ‘brand name for a proprietary
literacy system.’”13 Nor is there any inherent contradiction in our subsequent
consideration of the materials that purportedly reflected Applicant’s intent in
choosing the phrase WORD BANK. The decision merely explained that Applicant did
not explicitly state that the intended commercial impression reflected in those
materials was the distinctive commercial impression Applicant was referring to in its
arguments, and then nonetheless considered and addressed whether the relevant
consumers would perceive that intended commercial impression.
11 Id. at 5.
12 Id. at 13.
13 Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE 10.

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We therefore reject Applicant’s assertion that the Board erred by treating
Applicant’s failure to further clarify its arguments regarding commercial impression
as a “substantive deficiency.”14 The final decision did, in fact, consider and address
Applicant’s evidence and asserted commercial impression (i.e., “a child’s growing
internal store of language”).15 Thus, the decision does not treat the lack of specificity
in Applicant’s arguments as a “substantive deficiency” that affected the Board’s
ultimate conclusion.
The implication that the Board improperly prevented Applicant from fully arguing
its case by “declaring” the appeal “fully briefed” is likewise inaccurate. The phrase
“fully briefed,” as used in the context of an ex parte appeal, and as appropriately
employed in our final decision, simply means that the applicant has filed both an
appeal brief and a brief replying to the examining attorney’s brief. But Applicant
attaches outsized significance to the decision’s use of this wording to support its
argument that, because Applicant filed its reply brief before the Board granted
remand, Applicant “had no subsequent briefing opportunity to respond to the
Examining Attorney’s treatment of the remand evidence or further articulate the
significance the Board later said Applicant had failed to articulate.”16
It is true that, once a reply brief is filed, no further briefs are permitted without
authorization by the Board. Trademark Rule 2.142(b)(2), 37 C.F.R. § 2.142(b). But we
14 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE 13.
15 Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE 11.
16 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE 13.

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see no reason why further briefing would be necessary here. Applicant’s request for
remand, which was filed on the same day as its reply brief,17 stated that its purpose
was to introduce evidence of “marketplace presentation” of the proposed mark,
“demonstrating how the applied-for composite wording is presented to consumers as
the title of a structured literacy system and unified educational program.”18 Applicant
now states in its request for reconsideration of the final decision that the commercial
impression it was alluding to in its prior arguments is that “WORD BANK represents
the child’s growing internal store of acquired language, with learned words
functioning conceptually as deposits into that developing store.”19 This more specific
version of Applicant’s commercial impression argument does not appear in its appeal
brief, reply brief, or the body of the request for remand. But, as Applicant indicates,20
this more specific argument is based on the materials that Applicant attached to the
request for remand, which both the Examining Attorney and the Board considered
and addressed. And the Board’s final decision agreed with the Examining Attorney
that the evidence did not overcome the descriptiveness refusal, noting that, based on
the entirety of the evidence of record, the relevant consumers would not perceive
Applicant’s intended commercial impression without prompting by Applicant. In
other words, the arguments that Applicant claims did not receive a full hearing were
in fact considered. Thus, we disagree with Applicant’s suggestion that the Board
17 See Request for Remand, 7 TTABVUE; Applicant’s Reply Brief, 8 TTABVUE.
18 Request for Remand, 7 TTABVUE 2-3.
19 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE 4.
20 See id.

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erred in not affording another opportunity to clarify its arguments or present
additional arguments concerning the Examining Attorney’s treatment of Applicant’s
remand evidence.
That brings us to Applicant’s contention that it was improper for the Board to rely
on Applicant’s own statements about its goods and services to support a finding of
descriptiveness, but discount Applicant’s evidence of its own marketplace use
“showing the context in which consumers encounter and understand the WORD
BANK concept.”21 This argument focuses on the final decision’s statement that the
Board is not “convinced that the relevant consumers, who would be aware of the
descriptive significance of WORD BANK in the context of literacy education, would
perceive this alternative meaning without Applicant’s prompting.”22 There is an
important distinction as to what each type of evidence shows. That is, one type of
evidence—Applicant’s statements about the nature of the goods and services—
indicates what the goods are and thus whether the goods and services feature the
characteristics for which the applied-for mark might have descriptive significance.
The other type of evidence shows Applicant’s attempts to have its mark perceived in
a particular way. As the final decision indicated,23 an applicant is not always
successful in its attempts to have a mark perceived as the applicant intended. See
Roux Labs., Inc. v. Clairol Inc., 427 F.2d 823, 828-29 (CCPA 1970). Thus, Applicant’s
21 Id. at 8.
22 Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE 12.
23 Id.

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own use of the proposed mark—including the accompanying “brain-and-currency
imagery”24 in its marketplace materials—is relevant evidence that must be
considered, but it may nonetheless fail to establish that a mark will be perceived as
distinctive, especially where the other evidence of record shows descriptive
significance.
Applicant itself acknowledges that the Board is entitled to weigh the evidence of
record in reaching its determination and, in doing so, give more weight to some
evidence and less weight to other evidence.25 See Real Foods Pty Ltd. v. Frito-Lay
North America, Inc., 906 F.3d 965, 979 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“The TTAB is entitled to
weigh the evidence . . . .”) (citing Inwood Labs., Inc. v. Ives Labs., Inc., 456 U.S. 844,
856 (1982) (“Determining the weight and credibility of the evidence is the special
province of the trier of fact.”)). And, in this case, the final decision reflects the Board’s
consideration of Applicant’s evidence of marketplace use together with all the other
evidence of record, including Applicant’s own statements regarding the nature of the
goods, as well as the ultimate determination that the evidence supporting
descriptiveness outweighed the evidence showing Applicant’s purported attempts to
associate the mark with an “internal storage of language.”
Relatedly, Applicant takes issue with a footnote in the decision stating that “based
on the record, ‘word bank’ could also be descriptive of something that facilitates an
“internal storage of language,’ because that phrase is another way of referring to a
24 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE 7.
25 Id. at 8 (“The Board was free to conclude that Applicant's marketplace evidence carried
insufficient weight to overcome the evidence supporting descriptiveness.”).

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collection of vocabulary terms.”26 According to Applicant, this statement is not
supported by the record and is inconsistent with the principle that to be merely
descriptive a term must immediately convey knowledge of a quality, feature, function,
or characteristic of the goods or services with which it is used.27 Applicant
misunderstands this portion of the final decision, which is intended to indicate that,
even if Applicant’s evidence of marketplace use were deemed to establish that the
relevant consumers would perceive WORD BANK as referring to an “internal storage
of language,” that particular significance could also be considered descriptive because
it is self-evidently highly similar in meaning to “a collection of vocabulary terms.”
Because we concluded that the evidence of record did not establish Applicant’s
proffered alternate meaning, we did not need to consider or explain its potential
descriptiveness further. More importantly, the statement did not constitute a finding
by the Board that was necessary to the final decision’s determination that Applicant’s
proposed mark is merely descriptive. Accordingly, no error can be attributed to this
statement.
II. Arguments Concerning Examining Attorney Review
The remaining errors alleged by Applicant relate to the final decision’s discussion
of the Examining Attorney’s review of Applicant’s response to a nonfinal Office action
during prosecution and to the reassignment of the application to another Examining
Attorney after the appeal was filed.
26 Id. at 8-9. The relevant statement in the final decision can be found at 13 TTABVUE 12
n.31.
27 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE 9-11.

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As to the first point, the final decision addressed Applicant’s argument that “the
refusal should be reversed because an examining attorney ‘cannot lawfully convert a
non-final refusal into a Final refusal without showing that . . . Applicant’s arguments
were considered and found insufficient.’”28 The final decision deemed this argument
unfounded because “[i]n accordance with accepted examining procedure, the Final
Office Action noted that based on Applicant’s response, a requirement had been
satisfied, but that the Section 2(e)(1) refusal was maintained and made final.” The
decision further noted that it was apparent from the content of the final Office action
that the Examining Attorney had reviewed the response.
Applicant now contends that the Board erred by presuming that the Examining
Attorney had adequately reviewed Applicant’s entire response to the nonfinal Office
action based on the Examining Attorney’s references to portions of the response and
the fact that the Examining Attorney had reiterated the reasons for refusal.29 We
disagree. As the final decision states, the Examining Attorney’s Office action
complied with relevant examination procedures, as set forth in the TRADEMARK
MANUAL OF EXAMINING PROCEDURE (TMEP) (May 2026), and included information
indicating that Applicant’s response had been reviewed.30 There is no reason, other
than Applicant’s own presumption, to conclude that the Examining Attorney did not
review Applicant’s response. Nor is there any legal support for Applicant’s suggestion
28 Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE 17 n.39.
29 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE 14-18.
30 Final Decision, 13 TTABVUE 17.

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that the Examining Attorney was required to provide a more detailed discussion of
Applicant’s arguments and evidence against the refusal or that in the absence of such
a discussion the refusal must be reversed.31
The other error alleged by Applicant relates to the reassignment of the underlying
application to a new examining attorney after the appeal was filed.32 Applicant
argues, inter alia, that “[a] later appellate defense cannot establish what analysis
occurred before the original Final Office Action”; “[a] reassignment cannot make the
later examiner’s reasoning the reasoning of the original examiner”; and “persistence
of the same refusal through successive procedural stages does not establish that every
preceding stage was adequately reasoned merely because the ultimate outcome
remained unchanged.”33 The crux of Applicant’s arguments, to the extent we can
make sense of them, appears to be that the subsequent Examining Attorney’s
analysis and arguments on appeal do not cure the alleged shortcomings of the original
Examining Attorney’s Office actions during prosecution. However, as already
discussed above and addressed in the final decision, the original Examining
Attorney’s examination complied with the relevant examination procedures in
31 Citing TMEP § 713.02, Applicant argued in its appeal brief that “[t]he USPTO is required
to provide careful review of every response.” Applicant’s Appeal Brief, 4 TTABVUE 10. First,
the TMEP does not have the force of law. See Foreword to the TMEP (“The guidelines set
forth in this Manual do not have the force and effect of law. They have been developed as a
matter of internal office management and are not intended to create any right or benefit,
substantive or procedural, enforceable by any party against the office.”). Second, the TMEP
section Applicant relies on merely explains that as a courtesy to applicants, Office actions
should note when a refusal or requirement is still outstanding or has been withdrawn,
obviated, or satisfied. See TMEP § 713.02.
32 Request for Reconsideration of Final Decision, 14 TTABVUE 18-22.
33 Id. at 21.

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reviewing Applicant’s response. Further, the record reflects that the original
Examining Attorney’s final Office action explained the reasoning for maintaining and
making final the refusal under Section 2(e)(1). While Applicant implies that the
underlying reasoning employed by the examining attorneys somehow differed, our
review of the record indicates otherwise.
III. Conclusion
Having carefully reviewed Applicant’s arguments, we do not find any error in the
Board’s final decision affirming the refusal to register Applicant’s proposed mark,
WORD BANK: WORD LEARNING PROGRAM, on the ground that, under
Trademark Act Section 2(e)(1), it is merely descriptive of Applicant’s identified goods
and services in International Classes 16 and 41. Accordingly, Applicant’s Request for
Reconsideration of the Board’s final decision is denied and the Board’s July 30, 2026,
final decision stands as issued.