Everyone loves a holiday, but, sometimes, work just can’t wait. In honor of our recently-passed Thanksgiving, we took a look at the trademark professionals who are clocking in while everyone else is taking off.

To do this, we looked at three data points: the number of new applications filed, the number of outgoing Office Actions (including requests for reconsideration, etc.), and the number of incoming Office Action Responses (same) to give us a look at both activity by the USPTO and by outside lawyers/the public.

Overall, activity has gone up by quite a lot over time: activity was basically nil in 1990 and 2000, and has risen markedly since 2010.

In 2000, there were only 32 applications with a filing date of Thanksgiving, 0 on Christmas, and two on New Year’s, opposed to an average of 780 per day. By 2019, there were 439 new apps on Thanksgiving, 300 on Christmas, and 223 on New Year’s, versus an average day of 1,355 — a substantial increase.

On the Office Action front, the USPTO has become increasingly active on the holidays, although there is some variability. Christmas 2010 saw a high-water mark of 244 outgoing Office Actions (but Christmas was quieter at 123), 2019 saw 105 on Thanksgiving and 462 on Christmas. New Year’s also had a big change, from 36 in 2010 to 349 in 2019. In general, 2019 was much busier than 2010, with about 1400 outgoing Office Actions per day versus around 800 in 2010.

Office Action Responses also grew over time with each of 2018-2020 seeing between 226 and 255 responses iled on Thanksgiving. Christmas was slower, and New Year’s the slowest of all, with about 2/3 as many responses filed as Christmas or New Year’s. The average number of responses filed per day is much lower than the outgoing documents, and only grew from around 400 per day in 2010 to around 700 per day in 2019.

What did we learn from this? First, Americans are increasingly terrible at taking time off. Part of this is due to the ease of working remotely — something that the Trademark Office has long taken the lead on, but something that has carried over to private practice as well. Second, the Office isn’t too enamored of New Year’s Day. A surprising number of Examiners are deciding to start hitting their quotas for the year right off the bat. Despite it being a holiday, 2020 saw almost 50% of the usual Office Action activity level, and recent years have been north of 20% of normal consistently. No other holiday even approaches that level of activity, although the number of filings on Thanksgiving the last two years got close. International applicants (who don’t have the holiday) are driving a lot of that filing volume, though, so it’s not as focused on US lawyers’ behavior as the Office Action activity.

Have a good one, and, please, take a dang holiday once in a while.