Native American Tribal Insignia Database

The Trademark Law Treaty Implementation Act of 1998 (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. At the direction of Congress, the USPTO created a database containing the official insignia of recognized Native American tribes. 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. 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 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. This information collection is used by the USPTO to enter an official insignia submitted by a federally or state-recognized Native American tribe into the database. There are no forms associated with this information collection.

The latest form for Native American Tribal Insignia Database expires 2023-07-31 and can be found here.

Request to Record an Official Insignia of a Federally Recognized Tribe

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