It will be recalled (blog article, August 7, 2021) that fifty-four trademark practitioners wrote to the Commissioner for Trademarks, asking that the Trademark Office computer systems be improved in several ways.  I expect that at some point we will hear back in writing from Commissioner Gooder, but I thought I would pass along that I have heard back verbally from the Commissioner about this. 

Briefly, the letter (which you can see here) asks that the Trademark Office enhance its computer systems so that there is room for more characters in the attorney docket number field, and so that there is room enough for the entirety of the holder address information that the International Bureau provides in Madrid Protocol designations, and room for more characters in the various mailing-address fields in the Trademark Office computer systems.

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Every now and then I reflect upon my musical listening habits back in about the 1970’s.  Some of the musical performing groups that I listened to at that time were named like law firms:

• Emerson, Lake & Palmer
• Crosby, Stills & Nash
• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
• Hall & Oates
• Loggins and Messina
• Seals and Crofts
• Simon & Garfunkel

(When I say “named like a law firm” my unstated assumption is that it has to have been a string of actual surnames of members.  This disqualifies “Captain & Tenille” because Captain’s surname was actually “Dragon”.  And it disqualifies “Earth, Wind & Fire” and “Blood, Sweat & Tears”.)

It was only years later that I learned about, and came to love, the brilliant jazz vocal music of the group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross which started in 1957.  Maybe it was that group that started the idea of being named like a law firm.

Relax, folks, the Trademark Office had a “comprehensive strategy” to detect and block those questionable trademark filings all along.  Continue reading →

There is a very interesting development in “where you sleep at night”.

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(Update:  the Commissioner for Trademarks says we will get all of our “asks”.  See blog article.)

Today fifty-four trademark practitioners sent a letter to David Gooder, the Commissioner for Trademarks, asking among other things that the docket number field in the Trademark Office systems be expanded from 12 characters to 25 characters and that the address fields be expanded.  You can see the letter here.  The letter got sent by Priority Mail Express, and you can track the envelope here.  It should get delivered on Monday, August 9.  I will also forward a PDF of the letter to Commissioner Gooder by email.

Let’s think some thanks and some positive thoughts in the direction of the fifty-four practitioners who signed this letter.

(Update:  the Commissioner for Trademarks says we will get all of our “asks”.  See blog article.)

(The letter has been sent.  See blog article.)

How often have you found that it is impossible to fit all of your docket number information into the docket number field in TEAS forms?

How often have you struggled to fit your client’s complete address into the small number of address fields in TEAS forms?

Please see a letter that will get sent on about Saturday, August 7, 2021 to the Commissioner for Trademarks.  Please consider adding your name to the list of signers.

The Commissioner for Trademarks has for more than two years now demanded to know, for each trademark applicant, “where you sleep at night”.  It’s not good enough to provide a post office box because, in the words of the previous Commissioner, “in most cases, a post office box address is not a domicile because you can’t live in a P O box.”  The Examining Attorneys always pounce on any trademark application for which the applicant’s address is a P O Box, demanding that the applicant reveal his or her “where you sleep at night” address.

The Commissioner does not, however, seem to act very consistently in his efforts to ferret out instances of an applicant failing to reveal where he or she sleeps at night.  

I pointed this out in a March 27, 2020 blog article entitled Trademark Office misses a chance to demand that a trademark owner reveal where it sleeps at night.  In that blog article I pointed out that the address provided by the applicant was the street address of the post office where the applicant’s P O Box was located.  The case proceeded to registration, and to this day the Commissioner has failed to force the applicant to reveal where it sleeps at night.

I pointed this out in a February 7, 2020 blog article entitled The Commissioner for Trademarks definitely discards the CMRA data that it receives from the USPS.  In that blog article I gave examples of cases where the USPTO actively disregarded information that it receives from the US Postal Service database that flags addresses that are CMRAs (Commercial Mail Receiving Agencies).  

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Now in 2021, the interesting question is whether the Commissioner has perhaps finally gotten around to making use of the CMRA information that it receives from the USPS.  See for example this application which was filed on November 10, 2020 and that has just recently reached the desk of an Examiner.  In this application, the applicant lists its address as 6547 North Academy Boulevard #2266, Colorado Springs, CO 80918. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe the Examining Attorney in this case will demand to know where the applicant sleeps at night.  I wonder if the Examining Attorney in that case will do so.

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Anyone sitting at home in their pajamas can do the couple of mouse clicks that are required to find out (from the USPS zip code database) that this is the address of a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (see screen shot).  Any competent computer programmer can write code that would do this lookup automatically in the USPS’s API for this database.  Here is what you see if you go to that address.  This is a Mail Center that offers “mail box rentals”.

See also this application where the applicant listed the same Mail Center address, and the Examining Attorney did not demand to know where the applicant sleeps at night.

You can do a TESS search for “(6547 )[OW] and (Academy)[OW] and live[ld]” and you will find no fewer than 2300 live US trademark applications for which the applicant has listed this Mail Center as its address.  I am astonished, in a good way, to see that in a few cases (for example this one) the Examining Attorney did figure out that the address is a CMRA.  But in the majority of cases (for example this one which is now registered) the Examining Attorney snoozed through it.

So it is quite clear that the Commissioner is not even now using the USPS API to flag applications that make use of CMRAs.  Yes, some individual Examining Attorneys occasionally check to see if a suspicious-looking applicant is making use of a CMRA.  But there is no consistent checking of the USPS database even now, a year after I first pointed this out to the Commissioner.

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I was astonished to learn that there are now over nine hundred thousand pending US trademark applications. Continue reading →