Month: March 2020

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AIPLA spring meeting is canceled

(Updated to include cancellation of the ABA-IPL annual meeting.)

Well it’s official.  The American Intellectual Property Law Association has announced the cancellation of its spring stated meeting which was scheduled for May 6-8 in San Antonio, Texas.

This comes after the cancellation of USPTO Design Day which was scheduled for April 23 in Alexandria, Virginia.  And it comes after the cancellation of the annual meeting of the International Trademark Association which had been set for Singapore in April and then had been shifted to happen in the US in May or June, and has now been rescheduled for November at some unspecified date and city.  

I don’t know whether AIPLA’s decision to pull the plug on its spring meeting was influenced by my report of the results of a survey of meeting attendees about their plans.

The American Bar Association has likewise canceled the American Bar Association Intellectual Property Law section annual meeting, scheduled for April 1-3 in Washington, DC.  

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A refreshing corporate response to the recent health and economic challenge

The headlines and press relations and social media are filled with corporate responses to the recent health and economic challenge.  Many of the corporate responses are a bit discouraging — Apple closing its iPhone stores, airlines canceling flights.  Many other corporate responses are predictable but a bit ham-fisted — hotel chains with emails to me in which the supposed communications goal is to let me know that they are cleaning each guest room extra well, but poorly concealed is a rather desperate plea that I will please book a room at one of their hotels so that they can make a little money.  Other corporate responses, for example from banks and other service industries, try to put the best face they can on the cutting back of their opening hours.  A remaining category of corporate response is to covertly raise prices, typically by keeping the nominal price the same while cutting back on the variety or quantity or timeliness of services or hours of operation.  Which brings us to a frankly encouraging corporate response from one of our favorite service providers.  Continue reading “A refreshing corporate response to the recent health and economic challenge”

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What is it sensing?

click to enlarge

Recently I happened upon a weather station with a couple of interesting-looking air sensors.  What do they sense?  It’s easy of course to work out what the white one (upper right) is sensing.  But the one in the lower center, metallic colored — what is it sensing? Continue reading “What is it sensing?”

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Free webinar: Learn about DAS and Designs

(Update:  The webinar took place and I think it went well.  To download the presentation slides or to watch a recording of the webinar, click here.)

It was all planned that I was going to be one of the speakers at USPTO Design Day 2020.  I was going to be presenting on the topic of DAS and Designs.  But Design Day got canceled.  What should I do with my presentation slides?  I’ll give the same presentation, but I’ll do it online.  This will be a free-of-charge webinar.  Maybe you’d like to attend, or maybe you know someone who’d like to attend.  Continue reading “Free webinar: Learn about DAS and Designs”

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USPTO 2020 Design Day is canceled

It is with regret that I report that USPTO 2020 Design Day, previously scheduled for April 23, 2020 (blog article), has been canceled.  I was really looking forward to attending the meeting.  I was scheduled to serve among the presenters at the meeting, speaking about the DAS system.

I will provide this presentation about the DAS system in a free-of-charge webinar on Tuesday, March 31.   To find out more about the webinar, or to register, click here.

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Help the meeting planners

Hello loyal blog readers.  Imagine how stressful it is right now for the people who are planning the upcoming intellectual property meetings.  INTA had planned its 2020 INTA Annual Meeting for Singapore, and canceled it, saying that it will schedule instead an annual meeting at some not-yet-selected city in the US, in May or June of 2020.  I gather that AIPLA is trying to figure out whether or not to keep in place its AIPLA Stated Spring Meeting presently scheduled for May 6-8 in San Antonio, Texas.  I have no doubt that the planners of the 2020 USPTO Design Day, scheduled for April 23 in Alexandria, Virginia, are wondering about all of this.  I imagine that the planners of the ABA-IPL 2020 Annual Meeting, scheduled for April 1-3 in Washington, DC are also wondering about all of this.  

The planners for those four meetings probably do not feel very comfortable trying to ask their potential attendees what their plans are.  But I can ask questions that they might not feel comfortable asking.  So I will.  And I will aggregate the responses and provide them to the planners of the four meetings.

Did you attend any of these four meetings in the past three years?  Are you thinking about attending one or more of these four upcoming meetings?  If so, please please please answer this short questionnaire and please do so by tomorrow, Wednesday, March 11.  It should only take two or three minutes and your answers might be a big help for the planners of these four meetings.  The questionnaire does not ask for your name or email address.  I will pass along the responses only in aggregated form.  

Thank you.

Carl Oppedahl

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Setting up remote access — computers

Recently at Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC we chose to explore possible work-from-home approaches.   This blog article and a previous article talk though some of the things that we are working on, in case it may be of interest to some readers.  The previous article talks about being able to unplug a phone from a desk in the office, and put the phone into car, and take it to an employee’s home, and plugging it in, and having it work just as it would in the office.  This article talks about being able to unplug a desktop computer from a desk in the office, and put the computer into car, and take it to an employee’s home, and plugging it in, and having it work just as it would in the office.  Continue reading “Setting up remote access — computers”

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Setting up remote access – telephones

Recently at Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC we chose to explore possible work-from-home approaches.   This blog article and some subsequent articles talk though some of the things that we are working on, in case it may be of interest to some readers. In this article we talk about setting up what we call “bat phones”, meaning phones that can be plugged in at the homes of employees and the phones work exactly as they would work in the office.  In a subsequent article we talk about setting up VPN access so that an employee might be able to take his or her desktop computer home, and plug it in, and have it work just as if it were in the office.  Continue reading “Setting up remote access – telephones”