flag of Afghanistan
On March 26, 2018, Afghanistan deposited its instrument of accession to the Madrid Protocol at the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization. The Madrid Protocol will thus enter into force for Afghanistan on June 26, 2018. You can see the WIPO notification here.
This brings to 101 the number of members of the Madrid system. Continue reading
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Okay, dear readers, tell me the truth — the instant you saw these Tesla charging pedestals, didn’t you immediately think of another consumer product?
Will you be in Seattle on May 21, 2018? Maybe for the annual meeting of the International Trademark Association (INTA)?
The reception will be Monday, May 21, 2018 from 6PM to 8PM. If you wish to attend, you will need a ribbon. Click here to RSVP and to get a ribbon.
Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant, 600 Pine Street – suite 401, Seattle, WA 98101.
See also Meet the Bloggers XIV will will take place the next day.
Will you be in Seattle on May 22, 2018? Maybe for the annual meeting of the International Trademark Association (INTA)? Then please attend the fourteen annual Meet the Bloggers. Be there or be square!
MTB XIV will be Tuesday, May 22, 2018 from 8PM to 10PM at Garage Billiards, 1130 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122. Read about it here and on the TTABlog and on the iPelton Blog.
See also the e-Trademarks listserv reception which will take place the previous day.
When you are filing a Madrid Protocol application, it is possible to check the “GB” box in addition to checking the “EM” box. With Brexit in progress, should you be checking both boxes? A March 14 tentative agreement (link) between EU and UK makes it perhaps less urgent to check both boxes in the near term, as I will discuss.
The 2017 US Toteboards have been published. These toteboards have the goal of listing the firms that obtained US design patents, US trademark registrations, and US utility patents for clients. You can see:
See the Office of Personnel Management announcement which says:
FEDERAL OFFICES in the Washington, DC area are CLOSED. Emergency and telework-ready employees required to work must follow their agency’s policies, including written telework agreements.
I wrote:
The USPTO is closed today, Friday, March 2, 2018.
Normally at this time of year such a closure would be due to a dusting of snow. But the reason for the closure is “high wind”.
Oh, and at the risk of stating the obvious, this means that any response or action that would have been due today will be timely if filed by this coming Monday, March 5, 2018.
But people are telling me they think the USPTO is actually open today. If this is true, then maybe the resetting of response dates to Monday won’t happen after all.
I will investigate further.
It’s that time of year again. A year ago we published the 2016 US Trademark Registration Tote Board and before that, the 2015 US Trademark Registration Tote Board. Now it’s time to get your numbers in for the third annual US Trademark Registration Tote Board.
The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients obtain US trademark registrations in 2017. The toteboard seeks to list US trademark registrations granted in 2017. The closing date for the questionnaire will be Thursday, March 8, 2018.
You can see the previous Toteboards here.
To learn more and to report your numbers for the 2017 US Trademark Registration tote board, please click here.
It is also time to report your numbers for the 2017 US Design Patent tote board and the 2017 US Utility Patent tote board.
https://www.uspto.gov/uspto-operating-status
Here is what the USPTO says:
While activities across much of the federal government ceased at 12:01 a.m. January 20, 2018, due to a lack of appropriated funding, the USPTO remains operational.
This is possible because the agency has access to prior year fee collections, which enables the USPTO to continue normal operations for a few weeks. Should the USPTO exhaust these funds before a government shutdown comes to an end, the agency would have to shut down at that time, although a very small staff would continue to work to accept new applications and maintain IT infrastructure, among other functions.
Further information regarding any adjustments to the USPTO’s operating status during a federal government shutdown will be posted on the USPTO website and delivered to the news media.
Erik Pelton
One of the smartest trademark practitioners in the US is Erik Pelton. Erik regularly shares his knowledge and experience on the E-Trademarks listserv and on his blog. He is a long-standing sponsor of Meet the Bloggers. Here is something that he posted on the listserv the other day:
I recently came across a peculiar situation for the first time: a person not affiliated with Applicant filed a correspondence change with the USPTO via TEAS. The only change was to add an additional email address to the record. They did this just before the registration issued.
My guess is that they were trying to game the Amazon Brand Registry system, which I believe automatically generates a link sent to the trademark registration email address(es) of record when creating a new account.
I filed via TEAS to change the correspondence to remove the email; and then the same email address was used to do it a second time. To add to the issue, the email address used is from a secure private email domain (tutanota.com).
My client and I have reached out the USPTO (who has responded quickly, I am pleased to share!) and to Amazon to warn them about this. I suspect it has happened to others who may not be aware.
If anyone has any additional information or experience about this issue, please share.
I had never heard of this until Erik posted this to the listserv. Prompted by Erik’s posting I surfed around a bit to try to learn what might be going on. I actually signed up for the Amazon Brand Registry and I can confirm that the trademark hijacking risk that Erik described does exist. Here is what I learned. Continue reading