Month: July 2022

As I explain in this blog article,  “presentation copies” from the USPTO are not very good from a “suitability for framing” point of view.  But what is much worse is that “presentation copies” are going to cause harm to the trademark community.  The Trademark Office’s recent spotlight on “presentation copies”, and indeed the Trademark Office’s recent program of giving them away for free, will very predictably embolden some trademark owners in overstating the breadth of their trademark rights.  The Trademark Office will be aiding and abetting the intimidation of parties who are not actually doing anything wrong but who are the target of overly broad cease-and-desist letters.  Continue reading “Why a “presentation copy” from the USPTO is no good”

(July 11, 2022.  Updated to provide a TSDR link for each application number.  Still none of the applications has been given to an Examining Attorney.)

The USPTO reports a pendency of around six to seven months for newly filed US trademark applications.  But there are quite a few trademark applications that were filed a lot longer ago than that, that still do not have an Examining Attorney.  Here are some examples:

Application Number	Filing date
88704832	November 25, 2019
88729476	December 17, 2019
88729463	December 17, 2019
88729452	December 17, 2019
88729389	December 16, 2019
88794834	February 12, 2020

As you will see, the oldest one on this list was filed more than 2½ years ago and still does not have an Examining Attorney.   I hope and trust that some reader of this blog article who works in the Trademark Office will pass along these six application numbers to whoever it is that is responsible for assigning Examining Attorneys to trademark applications.

It strikes me that this is the sort of thing that computers are supposed to be good at.  How can it possibly be that the Trademark Office does not already have some automated process that runs, say, once a month, and generates a report like this?  Such a report would permit the appropriate Trademark Office person to take corrective action (see 37 C.F.R. § 2.23(d) and TMEP § 108.03) by assigning an Examining Attorney.