The question a licensee asks before any other is whether the doors stay open, and the answer is more generous than most expect. Where denial, suspension, or revocation proceedings are pending before ATF, or such a notice has been served and the licensee has filed a timely request for a hearing, the license in the licensee’s possession remains in effect — even though that license has expired, and even though the suspension or revocation date specified in the notice on Form 4500 has passed. The business does not stop on the date printed in the notice; it stops when the process that produced the notice has run its course.

One condition attaches, and it is the one § 2.5 pointed here. With respect to a license that has EXPIRED, the protection applies only if the licensee has timely filed an application for renewal. That is the second job timely renewal does: not merely keeping the ordinary paperwork simple, but preserving the thing that keeps a contested business trading. A licensee who let the renewal slip and then received a notice has nothing for this provision to keep alive — the license they are holding expired on its own terms, and no proceeding revives it.

Notice also what the protection is not. It keeps an existing license in effect; it does not confer a license on an applicant whose application was denied. An applicant contesting a denial has no license in their possession to be kept in effect, so nothing here permits them to trade while the hearing is arranged. The provision is written for licensees defending something they hold, and the difference between defending a license and pursuing one runs through this whole chapter.