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It’s that time of year again. The time of year when it is important to keep track of the fact that Daylight Saving Time is different in Switzerland from the way it is in the United States. This is important because you might be in the US, and you might be e-filing (or fax-filing) some document with the International Bureau of WIPO. Continue reading “Filing at the International Bureau and Daylight Saving Time”
Alert reader and experienced design practitioner Richard Stockton tipped me off that today, the Government of Mexico deposited its instrument of accession to the Hague Agreement. This brings the number of members of the Hague system to 74.
This accession has been among the most anticipated of Hague accessions in recent years. I blogged about the imminent accession here (October 21, 2017) and here (December 11, 2017) and here (July 19, 2018) and here (October 2, 2018) and here (October 20, 2018) and here (November 5, 2018). You can see the WIPO press release here.
Mexico joined the Patent Cooperation Treaty on January 1, 1995 and joined the Madrid Protocol on February 19, 2013. Thus, with today’s accession Mexico achieves the trifecta of membership in all three international e-filing systems (patents, trademarks, and designs). The Hague Agreement will enter into force in Mexico on June 6, 2020.
This means that from June 6, 2020, applicants in Mexico will be able to use the Hague system to protect their industrial designs. Likewise applicants in many dozens of countries around the world will from that date be able to use the Hague system to protect their designs in Mexico.
Now that Mexico has joined, perhaps the most eagerly awaited accession is that of China.
I just received a Notice to File Corrected Application Papers telling me that the PDF claims in IFW for my newly filed patent application don’t have the right line spacing. The Notice says that I have to reprint the claims and send them in again. But get this — I filed those claims as a DOCX file — a character-based file. Would you like to make a guess who it is that converted that DOCX file into a PDF file? Yes. It was the USPTO that did the conversion to PDF. Not me. So it’s the USPTO that got the line spacing wrong. Continue reading “USPTO bounces its own rendering of DOCX claims”
Last Friday I received a letter dated February 28 from the Acting Commissioner for Trademarks, responding to the letter from the One Hundred Ninety-Nine Trademark Practitioners. I posted it here for everybody to see. The letter talks about the requirement that an email address be provided for the trademark owner even if the trademark owner is represented by counsel.
We are all going to want to study that letter from the Acting Commissioner in our collective efforts to make sense of the February 14 Exam Guide.
The American Intellectual Property Law Association has a Committee called Trademark-Relations with the USPTO, of which I am a member. The Committee, often referred to by the shorthand TRUC, was concerned about the February 14 Exam Guide. The AIPLA, coordinating with TRUC, sent a letter to the Acting Commissioner with questions about the owner email address requirement. As it turns out, February 28 was a busy day for the Acting Commissioner, because not only on that date did she send this letter to the 199, but she also sent a reply to the AIPLA. A copy of the Acting Commissioner’s letter to the AIPLA may be seen here.
We are all going to want to study that letter from the Acting Commissioner as well, in our collective efforts to make sense of the February 14 Exam Guide.
I’m working on a blog article where I will try to make some sense of the February 14 Exam Guide in light of these two letters from the Acting Commissioner.
Quite often when I find that some consumer electronic device that I purchased has a really nice or clever feature, I realize that this is not at all due to my somehow having been a savvy purchaser, but instead that it is due to dumb luck. This really nice feature of my new Lenovo Yoga notebook computer falls into the “dumb luck” category. Continue reading “Charging port redundancy”
US trademark practitioners are familiar with 37 CFR § 2.17(g), which says:
Duration of power of attorney.
- For purposes of recognition as a representative, the Office considers a power of attorney filed while an application is pending to end when the mark registers, when ownership changes, or when the application is abandoned.
- The Office considers a power of attorney filed after registration to end when the mark is cancelled or expired, or when ownership changes. If the power was filed in connection with an affidavit under section 8, 12(c), 15 or 71 of the Trademark Act, renewal application under section 9 of the Act, or request for amendment or correction under section 7 of the Act, the power is deemed to end upon acceptance or final rejection of the filing.
Where exactly did this Rule come from? Whose idea was it? I had always assumed that I knew where it came from, but recently I actually looked at the history of the Rule and I now think I was probably wrong in my assumption. Maybe you know where exactly this Rule came from, in which case please post a comment below. Continue reading “Where did 37 CFR § 2.17(g) come from?”
(The USPTO 2020 Design Day has been canceled. See blog article.)
It will be recalled that I told you to save the date for Design Day 2020 which will take place on Thursday, April 23. The in-person event will be at the main auditorium at 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. Yes there will also be the opportunity to watch the event remotely at the satellite patent offices.
Hopefully you did indeed save the date.
Now the exciting news is that registration is now open for Design Day 2020. To register, click here.
This event always sells out. If you snooze, you lose. I suggest that if you are planning to attend, it would be wise not to dawdle in registering.