With more than two weeks to go before Design Day 2017, it is now sold out. If you did not RSVP by now, it’s too late. I’ll be there and our patent agent Charles Roth, who has prosecuted a lot of design patent applications, will be there. We look forward to seeing you there.
Please attend Meet the Bloggers XIII in Barcelona!
The place and time for Meet the Bloggers XIII is now set. Perhaps the best non-INTA event ever devised by woman or man, MTB XIII will be held on Monday, May 22nd, 7:30 – 9:30 PM, at Xup Xup in Barcelona (map). Come and meet some of the best trademark attorneys in the world, and while you’re at it say hello to the sponsors of this year’s event.
To learn more or to RSVP, click here.
What does TYFNIL mean?
Recently in the Design Listserv a Paris Convention question arose. The question was, under Article 4 of the Paris Convention, could a design application claim priority from an earlier utility application? It’s a good question and if you have any thoughts about this, I urge you to join that listserv and share your thoughts.
But what prompts this blog article is the initialism “TYFNIL”. (It is not an acronym.) A listserv member pointed out that even if the Office examining the design application were to find nothing wrong with such a priority claim, the owner of the design protection would never really know for sure where they stood until TYFNIL. What does that mean? Continue reading “What does TYFNIL mean?”
USPTO wrongly bouncing inventor declarations
Over on the EFS-Web listserv (the email discussion group for patent filers at the USPTO) there was an interesting discussion recently. A number of USPTO customers (frequent patent filers at the USPTO) were talking about USPTO’s bad habit of bouncing inventor declarations that have nothing wrong with them.
It would not be so bad if USPTO were to do its bouncing promptly after the inventor declaration is filed. In that case, if indeed there were actually something wrong with the inventor declaration, it would be a realistic goal to round up a fresh signature from the inventor.
Instead, the USPTO waits until allowance to mail the “Notice Requiring Inventor’s Oath or Declaration” (Form PTOL-2306). The Notice states that there is some real or imagined defect in the inventor declaration that was filed back when the patent application was filed in the first place. In a very large percentage of cases, there is not actually anything wrong with the inventor declaration. Continue reading “USPTO wrongly bouncing inventor declarations”
Past April Fool’s Day articles
Here are some of my past April Fool’s Day blog articles:
- Now you can hand-file applications in the four satellite patent offices!
- USPTO relocates “contingency” EFS-Web server to Denver patent office
- A little-known USPTO initiative to reduce the backlog
As for the second article (USPTO relocates its “contingency” EFS-Web server) what is particularly sad is that it should not have been an April Fool’s article at all. As many have pointed out over the course of many years, there is an ongoing need for USPTO to relocate its contigency patent e-filing server to a geographic location distant from the main e-filing server. There have been many system outages at the USPTO over the years in which both the main server and the “contingency” server were both out of service. It is just common sense that the two servers should not be in the same building, connected to the Internet through the same single connection point, powered by the same source of electrical power.