I offer congratulations and thanks to John L. Welch, who has by now given nineteen years of service to the trademark community with the TTABlog. This remarkable blog, to which you should subscribe if you have not already done so, has no equal in the trademark community. This remarkable trademark practitioner, to whom you should drop a thank-you note, has no equal in the trademark community. Continue reading “Nineteenth anniversary of the TTABlog”
A small blink from the USPTO
(Update: see this blog article for a guess as to what “increase usability for sponsored accounts with large amounts of customer numbers” means. )
For the past seven weeks, and up until just a few hours ago, the USPTO was unwavering in its stated resolve to shut down PAIR and EFS-Web at 11:59 PM tonight. As recently as yesterday, when meeting with the National Association of Patent Practitioners, the Commissioner for Patents declined to agree to NAPP’s request to postpone the shutdown date (blog article). Now, on the last possible day, with less than two hours to go before the close of business, the USPTO blinked. Continue reading “A small blink from the USPTO”
NAPP met with USPTO about Patent Center yesterday
The last thing you heard from me about this was on Saturday, November 4, when I reported that the National Association of Patent Practitioners (NAPP) had been invited by the USPTO to attend a videoconference meeting about Patent Center. The USPTO made this invitation after receiving NAPP’s October 31, 2023 letter to the USPTO asking that the USPTO’s planned shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web be postponed. The meeting was scheduled for 11AM yesterday (ET). Now NAPP has posted a readout of the meeting on LinkedIn. Continue reading “NAPP met with USPTO about Patent Center yesterday”
The most recent USPTO wrong-headedness with Patent Center
I appreciate that the subject line does not narrow things down very much, given a seemingly limitless variety and number of ways that the USPTO has done wrong-headed things with Patent Center over the past five years of its development. But here is a recent breathtakingly wrong-headed move by the USPTO that deserves particular comment — abruptly imposing upon all applicants an extremely disruptive and wholly unnecessary roadblock to the uploading of PDF files. It makes Patent Center, which was already not easy to use given its many bugs, even harder to use.
Continue reading “The most recent USPTO wrong-headedness with Patent Center”
Listervs have been migrated to a new server
(Update: Microsoft is behaving badly about this. See blog article.)
Hello to the members of the various listservs hosted by Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC. Yesterday I migrated the listservs to a new server. For many members of the listservs, hopefully this will go largely unnoticed after a few test postings of yesterday and today. But for some members, this will be extra work and trouble. I am sorry about this.
Here are details.
Whitelisting. Previously the listservs were on a server at IP address 162.255.116.157. Now the listservs are on a server at IP address 66.29.132.148. Maybe you had previously set up a whitelisting entry in your email system to allow messages from 162.255.116.157 to reach you. If so, you may find that now you need to set up a whitelisting entry in your email system to allow messages from 66.29.132.148 to reach you. (Update: Microsoft is behaving badly about this. See blog article.)
Member password. This migration caused a reset of your password for your subscription to the listserv. To get your password figured out again, you might find it necessary to go to one of the eleven links below (for the listserv that you need to reset the password in) and click on the link, and follow the process for resetting your password.
Digest numbering. If you are a digest subscriber, you will see that this migration has reset the digest numbering to volume 1.
I am sorry about the extra work and trouble.
Links to user information pages for the listservs. The listservs affected by this server migration include:
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- copyright@oppedahl-lists.com
- designs@oppedahl-lists.com
- efs-il@oppedahl-lists.com
- efs-web@oppedahl-lists.com
- e-trademarks@oppedahl-lists.com
- an unpublished listserv for beta-test users of IP-Badger
- ip-transactions@oppedahl-lists.com
- madrid@oppedahl-lists.com
- pair@oppedahl-lists.com
- patentcenter@oppedahl-lists.com
- pct@oppedahl-lists.com
- st26@oppedahl-lists.com
Acknowledging a human contact from the USPTO today
In this blog article I will acknowledge a welcome human contact from a USPTO person today. Continue reading “Acknowledging a human contact from the USPTO today”
USPTO quietly fixes Patent Center bug CP31
(Update: shortly after this blog post, a nice person at the USPTO got in touch.)
Today, the USPTO quietly fixed Patent Center bug CP31. For more than three years, this bug was a trap for the unwary user (blog article, June 23, 2020). The user who made the mistake of checking for outgoing correspondence using Patent Center rather than PAIR ran the risk of malpractice in two distinct ways:
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- If the user were to check for outgoing correspondence on a Monday or a Tuesday, the Patent Center report would always state that there is no outgoing correspondence even if, in truth, there was outgoing correspondence.
- On other days of the week, on average the Patent Center report would be missing about 11% of the user’s outgoing correspondence.
Continue reading “USPTO quietly fixes Patent Center bug CP31”
US filers and filing at WIPO and daylight saving time
Keep in mind that most locations in the US will turn off daylight saving time today (November 5, 2022), but today is not the day that Switzerland will turn off daylight saving time. (Switzerland turned off DST a week ago, as I reported to you in a blog post a week ago.) Continue reading “US filers and filing at WIPO and daylight saving time”
Will the USPTO cut deep grooves in the airport runways?
When the City of Denver sold the bonds that would pay for the construction of Denver International Airport (to replace Stapleton airport), there was language in the bonds that imposed a contractual obligation: on the day that DIA was placed into service, deep grooves would be cut into each of the runways at Stapleton. Continue reading “Will the USPTO cut deep grooves in the airport runways?”
NAPP will meet with USPTO people on Monday about Patent Center
Update: the meeting took place (blog article).
The USPTO’s planned shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web will be this coming Tuesday, November 7 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time (see countdown clock). The National Association of Patent Practitioners (NAPP) wrote a letter to USPTO Director Kathi Vidal on October 31, 2023 (blog article), asking the USPTO to postpone the shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web. In response to this letter, Commissioner for Patents Vaishali Udupa has invited NAPP to meet with her and her colleagues about Patent Center on Monday, November 6. Others attending from the USPTO will be Deputy Commissioner for Patent Administration Richard Seidel, Richard Fernandez, and Tony Uranga. Attending on behalf of NAPP will be its president, Rich Baker, and its vice president, Dan Smith. The meeting will take place at 11AM Eastern Time.
It will be fascinating to hear about the results of the meeting.