Author: Carl

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Two USPTO people need to be retrained, and I don’t know their names

Two USPTO people need to be retrained, and I don’t know their names.  I don’t even know how to reach the supervisor of either of those USPTO people.  In the old days, I would just drop an email to Kevin Little and he would straighten out this kind of problem.  But he is gone and I don’t know who the new person is who does the job that he used to do.

I am hoping this blog article might reach an appropriate person at the USPTO, who could get in touch with me and could help with getting the two USPTO people retrained.  And, the place in our application file where one of the people made a mistake, maybe this person could get the mistake corrected in our application file.

Here is the background and here are the details.  Continue reading “Two USPTO people need to be retrained, and I don’t know their names”

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Using a trademark as a noun

screen shot from Trezor Safe 7As any experienced trademark practitioner will tell you, it is a big mistake to use a trademark as a noun.  Using a trademark as a noun (e.g., “Pass me a Kleenex”) instead of an adjective (e.g., “Pass me a Kleenex tissue”) risks transforming a brand name into a generic term, potentially leading to a loss of legal protection.   I have contacted Trezor Company s.r.o. (the maker of the cryptocurrency wallet shown at right) to suggest that they stop making this mistake.  Let’s see if, some time soon, they update their firmware and apps and web site accordingly.  Continue reading “Using a trademark as a noun”

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Sort of a Y2K problem with gasoline pumps

gas pump showing $9.99 price for gasolineMany long-time readers of this blog will recall the anxieties leading up to the year 2000.  The worry was that some software systems, to squeeze more information into less memory, were storing only the last two digits of the year instead of storing all four digits.  The worry was that when January 1, 2000 arrived, some systems would crash or calculate things incorrectly.  This was called “the Y2K problem”.  And now we have an example of a sort of Y2K problem with gasoline pumps.  Continue reading “Sort of a Y2K problem with gasoline pumps”

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Dealing with fragile USB C “power delivery” charging ports

redundant USB C "power delivery" charging ports
click to enlarge

Most readers of my blog will recall my blog article dated March 2, 2020 entitled Charging port redundancy.  The article talked about how nice it is if a maker of a notebook computer would set it up so that you could use any of a wide range of charging adapters, made by a wide range of manufacturers.  You would not be stuck having to purchase multiples of some proprietary-plug adapter to match a proprietary connector on a notebook computer.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the USB-C “power delivery” port on a notebook computer is fragile.  It wears out.  The miniscule connector pins in the USB-C port are only just barely up to the task of carrying the five or six amperes of charging current.  Every time the charging plug gets bumped or jiggled, there is a bit of flex imposed upon the fragile surface-mount solder connections for the port.  This blog article describes a way to try to deal with this fragility.   Continue reading “Dealing with fragile USB C “power delivery” charging ports”

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Unacceptable USPTO delays in forwarding responses to Examiners

We have a case in Technology Center 2100 in which we responded to a non-final Office Action on September 15, 2025.

Normally such a response would have gotten forwarded to the Examiner (by the LIE) within two or three business days.

In this case it got forwarded to the Examiner on January 16, 2026.  Yes, it took more than four months for the LIE to do the one or two mouse clicks required to place the response onto the desk of the Examiner.

Four months.  Not acceptable.  Continue reading “Unacceptable USPTO delays in forwarding responses to Examiners”

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Informed delivery now available for more business mailing addresses

One of the places where our firm receives mail is a post office box.  As recently as a couple of years ago, the USPS did not permit our firm to sign up for informed delivery with respect to our post office box.

But something has changed at the USPS.  At some unknown time in the past few months, the USPS has changed policy on this.  We have successfully signed up for informed delivery for our P O Box.

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Yet another round of sanctions for using AI-hallucinated case citations

Here is a sanctions order in a patent litigation case in federal district court in Kansas.  Several lawyers permitted their names to appear in a signature block of a brief.  The brief contained a citation to a non-existent case.  The brief cited multiple cases for saying things that they did not say.  How did the judge choose the magnitude of sanction to be imposed on each of the lawyers?  Continue reading “Yet another round of sanctions for using AI-hallucinated case citations”

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Rare Planetary Alignment on February 28, 2026

Hello dear readers.  On and around February 28, there will be opportunities to see several planets in the sky.   This will be shortly after sunset.

The planets that will be easy to see are Venus, Jupiter and Saturn.  The eagle-eyed watcher might get a glimpse of Mercury.  Only with binoculars might one also spy Uranus and Neptune.

My favorite smart phone app for locating such celestial objects is Stellarium.  Learn more at Starwalk.