Month: May 2024

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One dollar to get to the Atlanta airport redux

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(Note:  this posting replaces the similarly titled posting on May 20, 2024.  It provides a report on the results of the trip to the Atlanta airport and it offers examples of other more sensible rapid transit senior discount cards.)

The reader will recall that I had been in Atlanta in recent days to host the eleventh annual e-Trademarks listserv reception.  During my time in Atlanta, I obtained a Senior Reduced Fare card for MARTA, the subway system in Atlanta, which is the bottom card at right, called “breeze”.   I qualified for this card by being 65 years of age or older.  (The other way to qualify is to have a disability.)  This process is by now rather familiar to me, since I had previously obtained a senior discount card from the Washington Metro (top card at right, called “Senior Smartrip”) and from Denver’s Regional Transportation District (middle card at right, called “Special discount card”).

The Washington Metro Senior Smartrip card has no expiration date.  The Denver regional special discount card recites an expiration date, but it is some 65 years in the future, a date I think I can safely ignore.   But as you will see the Atlanta MARTA card unaccountably bears an expiration date a mere three years in the future.

It is understandable, I suppose, for such a reduced-fare card to have an expiration date in the near future if the way that the card holder were to qualify is by having a disability — I suppose there is some chance that the disability might go away at some later time.  But it strikes me that the status of “being 65 years of age or older” cannot cease to be the case merely because of the passage of three years.  Nonetheless you see that MARTA has in mind that I will need to go again to their headquarters in Atlanta three years from now, and to present myself in person, to prove that I continue to be at least 65 years old.

Oh, and for those keeping score at home, I can report that my trip to the Atlanta airport on May 21, 2024 did take place as planned, was very pleasant, and did cost a mere one dollar.  The trip was faster than a trip to the airport by taxi or Lyft or Uber would have been.

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Eleventh annual e-Trademarks reception was a success

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I am delighted to be able to report that the eleventh annual e-Trademarks reception went very well.  I think it was a complete success.  You can see a very nice group photo taken by listserv member Doug Isenberg, quoted at right.  Click to enlarge it.  You will see 48 attendees in the photo, taken toward the end of the evening.  Over the course of the event, some eighty attendees visited.  Celebrity attendees included Debbie Roenning, director of the Madrid Legal Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization, David Gooder, Commissioner for Trademarks of the USPTO, and Derrick Brent, Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO.

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Assignment Center was broken for customers using IPv6, now fixed

Here is a subtle mistake that the USPTO made recently.  The USPTO made it so that if a USPTO customer were to try to use Assignment Center using an IPv4 address, Assignment Center would work.  But if instead the USPTO customer were to try to use Assignment Center using an IPv6 address (Wikipedia article), Assignment Center would fail to load.  I reported this on May 7, 2024 in a posting to the Patent Practice listserv.  You can see the listserv posting here.

Now on May 13, I see that the USPTO corrected its mistake.  It is now possible to make use of Assignment Center even if you are using an IPv6 address.

I think what almost certainly happened is, one of the USPTO lurkers on the Patent Practice listserv saw the May 7 posting about the defect, and forwarded the posting to one of the Assignment Center developers, and eventually they corrected the defect.

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USPTO fails to let me know that it fixed a defect that I reported in Assignment Center

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Three times in February of 2024, by three different communications channels to the USPTO,  I reported a defect in Assignment Center.   The defect, shown at right, was that Assignment Center refused to permit me to record an assignment against a PCT application number.

Now, three months later, the USPTO did fix this defect.  But the USPTO failed to let me know they fixed it.  I had to stumble upon it by accident that the USPTO had fixed it.  Continue reading “USPTO fails to let me know that it fixed a defect that I reported in Assignment Center”

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Setting up a security camera system

These days, most people who want to have security camera systems choose cloud-based systems.  The cloud-based systems have recurring costs, and it is anyone’s guess how badly one’s privacy could be violated in the cloud.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some way to set up a security camera system that is completely self-contained, that does not send video data to a cloud, and that has no recurring cost?  The alert reader will have no difficulty guessing where this article is going.  Of course there is a way to set up a security camera system that is completely self-contained, that does not send video data to a cloud, and that has no recurring cost.  For convenient reference I will give a name to such a system:  “a good system.”  I have set up a page describing how to set up a “good” security camera system.

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Attend a 2½-day live in-person Patent Cooperation Treaty seminar in scenic Summit County, Colorado

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Attend a 2½-day live in-person Patent Cooperation Treaty seminar in scenic Summit County, Colorado, next to Lake Dillon and surrounded by snow-capped mountains.  Maybe also attend an optional half-day program specifically directed to docketing of the PCT.  Tuesday, June 25 to Thursday, June 27, 2024.

    • Get $100 off the 2½-day class if you book by May 18 – coupon code Z4GJFQJA
    • Get $40 off the half-day course if you book by May 18 – coupon code DXRLPGND
    • Get $140 off both courses if you book by May 18 – coupon code EPXOGTH0

For more information, or to register, click here.

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e-Trademarks listserv is broken

(Update:  Namecheap has restored the function of the e-Trademarks listserv.   It took 56 hours and 24 emails back and forth, but yes the function of the listserv has been restored.)

Hello folks.  The e-Trademarks listserv has been broken for about 36 hours now.   What triggered this was that on May 1, 2024 the listserv system did what it always does on the first day of every month — it sends out monthly membership reminders.  In the case of the e-Trademarks listserv this was about 1227 email messages with nearly identical subject lines and very similar email body texts.  Our hosting service provider (Namecheap) then compared this number (1227) with the stated limit (for our type of hosting) which is ten thousand email messages per hour, and somehow wrongly concluded that we sent so many emails that it supposedly violated the stated limit.  And Namecheap imposed a shutdown on the e-Trademarks listserv.

Yes, I know, if a person carries out complicated math, a person can eventually arrive at a conclusion that the number 1227 is actually smaller than 10000 and not larger than 10000.  And I have tried to explain this to the “legal and abuse” department at Namecheap and I have thus far apparently failed to make myself clear to them on this seemingly subtle point.

This is not the first time that Namecheap has wrongly tagged our listserv traffic as supposedly being spam.  Yes, what happens often is that hundreds or a thousand emails get sent at the same time, with identical subject lines.  But that is exactly what a listserv is supposed to do!  If the listserv were to fail to send hundreds or a thousand emails get sent at the same time, with identical subject lines, that would mean the listserv is failing at its stated function.  I have gone through this bad movie with Namecheap several times, including the following:

    • May 1, 2024, case number PRB-650-91372
    • February 21, 2024, case number JET-420-91825
    • November 6, 2023, case number LZW-313-84957
    • January 9, 2023, case number KHX-716-74404

In the previous three cases, what eventually happened was Namecheap realizing that they were wrong to shut down the listserv and then they corrected their mistake.  Now we have this most recent case and again I guess it will be a matter of time before Namecheap corrects its mistake.

Okay, I have vented.  Thank you, readers, for listening.

Some time, hopefully soon, the Namecheap people will follow along with my explanation that 1227 is smaller than 10000 instead of larger.  And they will restore the e-trademarks listserv to service.