Native American Tribal Insignia Database

The Trademark Law Treaty Implementation Act of 19981 (Pub. L. 105-330, § 302, 112 Stat. 3071) required the USPTO to study issues surrounding the protection of the official insignia of federally and state-recognized Native American tribes under trademark law. The USPTO conducted the study and presented a report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on November 30, 1999. One of the recommendations made in the report was that the USPTO create and maintain an accurate and comprehensive database containing the official insignia of all federally and state-recognized Native American tribes. In accordance with this recommendation, the Senate Committee on Appropriations directed the USPTO to create this database. The USPTO published the final procedures for establishing and maintaining the tribal insignia database in the Federal Register on August 24, 2001 (66 FR 44603).1 The USPTO database of official tribal insignias provides evidence of what a federally or state-recognized Native American tribe considers to be its official insignia. Section 2(a) of the Trademark Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1052(a), disallows the registration of marks that falsely suggest a connection with a non-sponsoring person or institution, including a Native American tribe. The database thereby assists trademark examining attorneys in their examination of applications for trademark registration by serving as a reference for determining the registrability of a mark that may falsely suggest a connection to the official insignia of a Native American tribe. The database, included within Trademark Search System, is available to the public on the USPTO website, and includes an online help program for using the system. More information about the program is available on the website at https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/laws/native-american-tribal-insignia. Tribes are not required to request that their official insignia be included in the database. The entry of an official insignia into the database does not confer any rights to the tribe that submitted the insignia, and entry is not the legal equivalent of registering the insignia as a trademark under 15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq. The inclusion of an official tribal insignia in the database does not create any legal presumption of validity or priority, does not carry any of the benefits of federal trademark registration, and is not a determination as to whether a particular insignia would be allowed or refused registration as a trademark pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq. Requests from federally recognized tribes to enter an official insignia into the database must be submitted in writing and include: (1) a depiction of the insignia, including the name of the tribe and the address for correspondence; (2) a copy of the tribal resolution adopting the insignia in question as the official insignia of the tribe; and (3) a statement, signed by an official with authority to bind the tribe, confirming that the insignia included with the request is identical to the official insignia adopted by the tribal resolution. Requests from state-recognized tribes must also be in writing and include each of the three items described above that are submitted by federally recognized tribes. Additionally, requests from state-recognized tribes must include either: (a) a document issued by a state official that evidences the state's determination that the entity is a Native American tribe; or (b) a citation to a state statute designating the entity as a Native American tribe. The USPTO enters insignia that have been properly submitted by federally or state-recognized Native American tribes into the database and does not investigate whether the insignia is actually the official insignia of the tribe making the request. This information collection includes the information needed by the USPTO to enter an official insignia for a federally or state-recognized Native American tribe into a database of such insignia.

The latest form for Native American Tribal Insignia Database expires 2029-07-31 and can be found here.

Request to Record an Official Insignia of a Federally Recognized Tribe

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