If you have not already seen it, you might want to look at the video documentary “Inventing to Nowhere”. It talks about the importance of the patent system. It is quite well done.
Most-read postings in “Ant-like Persistence” for 2014
The arrival of a new year prompts every blogger to look back to see which postings in the previous year reached a lot of eyeballs.
Well, by far the most-read posting for all of 2014 in Ant-like Persistence was “A little-known USPTO initiative to reduce the backlog“. This posting, dating from early April of 2014, might be of great interest to patent practitioners who missed the original posting.
In second place was “USPTO is closed today, Monday, March 17“. This was the posting that told readers that it was a snow day in Washington. It meant that anything that needed to be filed in the USPTO on Monday March 17 could be postponed until Tuesday March 18 and still be timely.
The people who subscribe to this blog are likely to hear of such USPTO closings in the future. So if you have not already done so, subscribe to the blog. And if you have a friend or colleague who would like to hear about it when the USPTO has a snow day, encourage them to subscribe to the blog.
29 days remaining to submit your design patent count for 2014
As you will recall from this posting, I will be publishing a report in February of 2015 listing patent firms and the numbers of US design patents they obtained for clients in 2014. In that posting I invited each firm to submit its count of US design patents obtained in 2014 (and 2013, and 2012). As of right now, five patent firms have responded. Between them, those five firms obtained 418 US design patents in 2014, 443 US design patents in 2013, and 432 US design patents in 2012.
There are 29 days left for submissions. There are perhaps a hundred or so patent firms that did significant numbers of US design patent filings that issued in 2014, meaning that there are perhaps 95 or so submissions still to come. If you are with a firm that obtained US design patents for clients in 2014, I encourage you to read the original posting to see an easy way to do the database search to count your US design patent grants, and to send in your submission.
And if you know someone who is with a firm that obtained US design patents for clients in 2014, I encourage you to pass this posting along to that person so that they will know about the opportunity to respond.
The importance of warning clients about unscrupulous fee requests
We all need to redouble our efforts to warn clients about unscrupulous fee requests. Four recent examples reminded me how insidious these fee requests can be. The first one asks me to wire $2322.30 to a bank in Slovakia. The second one asks me to wire $2738 to a bank in Czech Republic. The third one asks me to wire $2548.25 (where do they get these amounts?) to a bank in Slovakia. And the fourth asks me to wire $2327 to a bank in Czech Republic.
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