Category Archives: Industrial Designs

Get your numbers in for the 2017 design patent toteboard

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It’s time for the sixth annual US Design Patent Toteboard.

The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients to obtain US design patents in 2017.  It will rank the firms according to the number of US design patents obtained.  Respondents are asked to report only US design patents for which the firm is listed on the front page of the granted patent.  Please respond by Thursday, March 8, 2018.

You can see the previous Toteboards here.

To respond to be listed in the 2017 US Design Patent Toteboard, click here.

It’s also time for the third annual US Utility Patent Toteboard.  To learn how to respond to be listed in that tote board, click here.

It’s also time for the 2017 US Trademark Registration Toteboard.  To learn how to respond to be listed in that tote board, click here.

 

 

Design Day 2018

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Design Day 2018 will be Wednesday, April 25, 2018.  As usual it will take place in the auditorium in the Madison Building in Alexandria, Virginia.

Design Day always sells out.  As soon as I learn of the signup opportunity I will post it in this blog.  If you are planning to attend, please be sure to sign up right away before it sells out.

An opportunity to save money on USPTO patent fees

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It will be recalled (see my blog article of December 14, 2017) that most USPTO patent fees will increase, some substantially, on Tuesday, January 16, 2018.  This presents an opportunity to save money.  If there is some fee that you were considering paying on or after January 16, maybe you should pay it earlier, for example on Monday, January 15.

Russia joins Hague Agreement!

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Mr. Alexandr Alimov (left) deposits the instrument of ratification with WIPO’s Director General Francis Gurry (Photo: WIPO)

Russia has joined the Hague Agreement.

On November 30, 2017, the Government of the Russian Federation deposited its instrument of ratification of the Hague Agreement with WIPO’s Director General Francis Gurry.  The Hague Agreement will thus enter into force in the Russian Federation on February 28, 2018.

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Design filing receipts from USPTO in a mere two days!

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click to enlarge

We filed a bunch of new design patent applications in the USPTO this past Tuesday the 14th.

I am astonished (in a good way) to see that USPTO has mailed Filing Receipts for two of the design applications today, the 16th.

In a quarter of a century of interaction with the USPTO as a registered practitioner, I have never seen a filing receipt arrive in a mere two days.  Until today, and today it happened in two cases.

(That’s the good news.  The bad news is that in each of these cases the FOAP is 44 months.  More than three and a half years, it seems, that we will have to wait for the cases to be examined.)

Have others been receiving Filing Receipts this quick?  I wonder if we are just lucky somehow, or if this is a (welcome) recent trend at the USPTO.  Please post a comment below.

Time returns to normal for WIPO filings

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As I reported a week ago, the usual autumn thing happened with time zones.  A week ago Europe “fell back” with daylight saving time.

Now today the US also “fell back”.

For the past week, US filers had an extra hour available to get a same-day filing date for filings at WIPO.  A US filer could file as late as 5PM (Mountain Time) instead of the usual 4PM, and get a same-day filing date.

Now it is back to normal.  The time of day to keep in mind is once again 4PM Mountain Time.

For the next week, an extra hour available for WIPO filings

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Filers in the Patent Cooperation Treaty, Madrid Protocol, and Hague Agreement systems (utility patents, trademarks, and industrial designs) know that it is important to keep always in mind when midnight will arrive in Geneva, where WIPO is located.

For a PCT filer, this matters because to get a same-day filing date, a PCT application being filed in RO/IB will (usually) need to be filed by 4 PM Mountain Time.  The same is true for filing an Article 19 amendment.  The same is true if you are using ePCT to file a Demand and Article 34 amendment.

For a Madrid filer, this matters among other things for the payment of decade renewal fees.

For a Hague filer, this matters for the the filing of an international design application at the IB.

The point of today’s post is that starting yesterday, and for the next week, you get an extra hour to get a same-day filing date.  The reason is that Europe and the US carry out their daylight saving time transitions on different days that are a week apart.

This means that you could file as late as 5 PM Mountain Time (instead of the usual 4 PM) and still get a same-day filing date.

Things will return to normal a week from now, on November 5, 2016.

Several countries maybe soon to join Hague Agreement!

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I had an opportunity to talk with a very nice person from WIPO.  This very nice person tells me that there are quite a few countries that are likely to join the Hague Agreement soon.  Listed in approximate sequence of when they might join are:

  • United Kingdom
  • Russia
  • China
  • Mexico
  • Israel
  • Vietnam
  • Canada

The typical first very visible step would be for a country to deposit an Instrument of Accession with the International Bureau of WIPO.  The usual next development would be that the Hague Agreement would enter into force, with respect to that country, three months later.

This is a very exciting time for the Hague Agreement.

Joining the DAS club – Eurasian Patent Office

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Logo of the Eurasian Patent Office

The intellectual property community benefits each time another Office joins the Digital Access Service (DAS).

The good news is that on November 1, 2017, the Eurasian Patent Office (EAPO) will join DAS.

EAPO will participate with DAS in both directions:

  • as a depositing Office, and
  • as an accessing Office.

The participation will include color documents as well as gray scale and black and white documents.

This is very good news.

Perhaps the biggest patent office (in terms of volume of patent filings) that has not yet joined DAS is the European Patent Office.  Here is a set of slides which EPO presented in May of 2015.  At slide 8, the EPO said:

It will surely be a welcome development when EPO joins DAS.

Another welcome development will be when EUIPO joins DAS, which will facilitate exchange of priority documents for the purpose of industrial design applications.

(See followup article on EPO’s plans to join DAS.)