AI, Bulk TM Apps Might Be Spurring Intent-To-Use Increase

Mike Hobbs, a partner in Troutman Pepper Locke’s Intellectual Property Practice Group, was quoted in the November 10, 2026, Law360 article, “AI, Bulk TM Apps Might Be Spurring Intent-to-Use Increase.”

• There are clear advantages to filing ITUs over use-based applications, where an applicant has to show that they’re already using their mark in commerce, according to Michael D. Hobbs Jr., a Troutman Pepper Locke LLP partner. The primary advantage is that an applicant gets an earlier priority date, which can matter when competitors are sometimes filing applications for similar marks within days of each other, he said.
  
  “We see more and more of our clients filing intent-to-use applications,” Hobbs said. “I’m actually, frankly, a little surprised that the numbers haven’t been higher over the years.”
  
  Like other attorneys, Hobbs said he suspects AI has something to do with the recent increase. But it’s not just AI that’s helping applicants with their filings, he suggested. AI companies themselves are responsible for a growing share of trademark applications, and these companies are in fierce competition with one another over branding and appear more likely to file ITUs so they can get their applications ahead of others in the space, Hobbs said.
  
  “A greater percentage of our economy is AI, and then if you’re an AI company, you tend to file earlier,” Hobbs said, adding, “If you think about the value of your organization, brands are going to be — if not the first thing that you’re eyeing — they’re going to be up there. You want to get that locked in as quickly as you can.”
  
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• Hobbs offered up one more potential driver behind the ITU increase. During the pandemic, the USPTO received an influx of fraudulent applications with origins overseas, he said. The agency has implemented a number of safeguards and has effectively tackled this issue, but one potential way around these safeguards are ITU applications, Hobbs suggested.
• “I’m not entirely ruling out that there may be foreign actors that are filing these intent-to-use [applications] because they can’t file use applications where they’re attesting that there’s use in the U.S., and so this is what they’re trying to do to secure registrations,” he said.