The 20th annual Patent Prosecution Boot Camp went well.
Nice article in WIPO’s PCT Newsletter
If you have not already done so, you should of course subscribe to the PCT Newsletter published by WIPO. (To sign up, click here.) The PCT Newsletter comes out monthly and it is very for anyone who uses the PCT. The newsletters have several kinds of very helpful information. For example …
Upcoming PCT Seminars. Each issue has a calendar of upcoming PCT Seminars, and this lets you plan ahead for your PCT training opportunities. As you can see in the current issue, I will be teaching about PCT several times in the next few months, including:
- Glendale, California on June 6
- Atlanta, Georgia on September 19
- Des Moines, Iowa on October 3-4
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 7
- Cary, North Carolina on November 21-22
Practical Advice. A particularly helpful section of each PCT Newsletter is the Practical Advice column. This column will pick some topic in PCT practice and will discuss it in depth, often pointing out a way to be really smart about some step in the PCT process, or a trap for the unwary.
The current issue has a Practical Advice column entitled Possible implications of submitting informal drawings when filing the international application which was prompted by my blog article Filing informal drawings in a PCT application. The Practical Advice column is written better than what I wrote! The overall tone of the column is nicer and more friendly to the reader than what I wrote, and the column mentions the ePCT preview function which I did not think to mention.
WIPO also provides a very helpful search function to look up past Practical Advice articles.
The main point here is that if you have not already done so you should subscribe to WIPO’s PCT Newsletter.
The sponsors for the Ninth Annual E-Trademarks Reception
Let’s thank our sponsors for the E-Trademarks reception that will take place next week (brochure page).
As you by now have heard, one of our sponsors is anonymous! See https://blog.oppedahl.com/?p=4496 .
The reception brochure is here: https://blog.oppedahl.com/?p=4307
Our first tier of sponsors is:
- Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC
- our anonymous donor, who offers “an anonymous tip of the hat to a remarkable community on behalf of all participating and lurking administrators and paralegals”
- Lerman & Szlak
- BlueFilamentLaw
- Polsinelli
Our next tier of sponsors is:
and another sponsor is Michael J Brown Law Office LLC.
Thank you to all of these generous sponsors who help to make this Ninth Annual E-Trademarks Listserv Reception possible.
Two receptions to attend next week in Boston
Next week I will be on the road again, to co-host the two least commercial and, I think, most fun, events at INTA time in Boston, namely Meet the Bloggers XV and the Ninth Annual E-Trademarks Listserv Reception. I hope you will attend.
An anonymous donor for E-Trademarks reception
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The E-Trademarks reception is now in its ninth year of tradition, taking place as usual during INTA time, this year in Boston.
As in many past years, generous donors help to sponsor the reception, which you can read about here. You can see the twelve sponsors in the poster at right. Two posters like this will be on easels at the event.
As you can see from the prominent place on the poster, five of the sponsors were particularly generous. But what I find extremely … I guess heart-warming … is that one of the particularly generous sponsors gave on condition that the sponsor’s name not be disclosed.
The philosopher Maimonides is among many who describe the giving of an anonymous gift as one of the highest levels of giving. Our anonymous sponsor said to me:
OK. Look for my personal check … on condition you will not mention my name but give credit for it only to:
Anonymous TM Administrator, as a tip of the hat to a remarkable community on behalf all participating and lurking administrators and paralegals.
So, maybe you would like to enjoy a drink with this remarkable community. If so, drop by next Tuesday in Boston. Maybe unbeknownst to you, you will click a wine glass or share a smile with this anonymous trademark administrator.
Patent Prosecution Boot Camp 2019
The Twentieth Annual Patent Prosecution Boot Camp is underway just now in Philadelphia. I have the honor to serve on a faculty with thirty-six other extremely experienced practitioners who spend their own money for air travel and hotels, and of course they take a hit on their professional billings for a couple of travel days as well as the teaching day. Decades ago, when I had the good fortune that my employer paid for it, I attended a similar seminar organized by the Practicing Law Institute. And as I sat there in the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan those decades ago I lacked even a bit of a clue as to the economic hit being taken by astonishing generosity of the faculty members. I learned so much, and even now from time to time I make use of this or that nugget of practitioner wisdom that someone passed along during that seminar, so many years ago. As just one example if I manage now to draft a decent patent claim, the earliest credit goes to Evelyn Sommer (1925-2016), who taught one of the small-group claim-drafting classes at that seminar.
The only thing one can do is to try, of course, to pay it forward as best we can, and I expect that is exactly why the thirty-six other faculty members are there just like me.
The Boot Camp started yesterday morning and will finish tomorrow. I am headed to Philadelphia now, and my segment (yeah, take a guess, it is about the Patent Cooperation Treaty!) will be tomorrow.
Who taught you how to draft a patent claim? Will you give that person some credit in a comment below?
Being smart about SMS two-factor authentication
This blog article makes two main points:
- that of the several ways of doing two-factor authentication, SMS (text messaging) is by far the most insecure, and
- if you have no choice but to use SMS two-factor authentication, there is a way to be really smart about it.
The way to be smart about SMS two-factor authentication is to create your own virtual cell phone from clever and inexpensive voice-over-IP building blocks. Continue reading
A Pound of Feathers!
(Note: All users of Feathers! need to read all of this article.)
The old aphorism asks “what weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?” And of course the answer is they weigh the same. But when it comes to the Feathers! software, today we have a metaphor.
What got me thinking in a philosophical way about this was that late yesterday the telephone rang in my office, and it was the Commissioner for Trademarks, Mary Boney Denison, calling for me. Continue reading
Post-Design Day
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Design Day XIII wrapped up at about 5PM, at which point the attendees headed over to the aptly named Trademark Bar. I was delighted to have had many opportunities during the day and at this beverage break to meet with colleagues and friends in the design community.
Excellent wifi at Design Day XIII
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I am delighted to report that USPTO is providing really excellent wifi at today’s Design Day.