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The fee to be paid by a US PCT filer for a search carried out by IP Australia dropped today, from $1722 to $1631.
I mentioned this in a previous blog post.
You will not need to worry about accidentally paying an incorrect fee amount, because the e-filing systems have already been updated to reflect the new fee amount. For filers in RO/US, the EFS-Web system has already been updated. And for filers in RO/IB, the ePCT system has already been updated.
Starting from December 25, a trademark owner in Malawi can file a Madrid Protocol application to pursue protection in one or more Offices outside of Malawi. And starting from that date, a trademark owner outside of Malawi can file a Subsequent Designation to Malawi (or can file a new Madrid Protocol application designating Malawi).
It is recalled that the Patent Cooperation Treaty entered into force on January 24, 1978, initially with 18 contracting states. But perhaps not all readers appreciate that Malawi was one of those initial 18 contracting states for the PCT! Saying this differently, Malawi was more trendy, modern, and up-to-date about the PCT than most of the 152 present-day members of the PCT. Nobody joined PCT sooner than Malawi!
The two-letter code for Malawi is “MW”.
When you file a PCT application in a Receiving Office other than the RO/IB, the Receiving Office will consider whether it is “competent” to handle that particular PCT application. If the RO determines that it is non-competent, it will transfer the application to the RO/IB for further processing. (The application does not lose its filing date; the RO/IB will honor the filing date that had been given to the application by the first RO.)
Each RO determines its own conditions for “competency”. In the case of RO/US, the two ways that the RO might decide that it lacks competency as to a particular PCT application are:
Either of these situations will prompt RO/US to transfer a particular PCT application to the RO/IB.
But what, the long-suffering blog reader may ask at this point, does all of this have to do with “lorem ipsum“? Yes, those are today’s fun questions — the interesting question “what is lorem ipsum?” and the even more interesting question “what does lorem ipsum have to do with Receiving Office procedure under the Patent Cooperation Treaty?” Continue reading “It turns out there’s a name for this: lorem ipsum”
In this article I describe in quite some technical detail what happens if you were to place a telephone call to our office. In this article I also describe a failover measure that I set up today. You might want to set up a similar failover measure for your own telephone system.
I’ve received many questions from people who have tried to use the “new, safer and simpler log-in” for PAIR and EFS-Web. (See the big blue footer that now appears whenever you try to use PAIR.) Here’s what one very experienced USPTO customer asked me:
Last week I set up two-factor authentication with MyUSPTO, following the USPTO’s instructions. Recently the big blue banner started appearing and I figured I had better start using the newer, safer and simpler log-in. So today I needed to e-file form SB39 in one of my cases. This is my time to try out the newer, safer and simpler log-in, right? I logged in at the USPTO web site using my MyUSPTO user ID and password. So far, so good. Over on the right side, it says “File patents with EFS Web”. So now that I have logged in, I click there and I reach the “unregistered e-filers” page. There are some links but none of them will get me to the “registered” EFS-Web. Finally I give up on MyUSPTO and I click on the old-fashioned link on the upper left and I click on “eFile (registered)” and that got me to the familiar old Entrust Java Applet page. I e-filed my form SB39.
When that was done I went back to the MyUSPTO home page again hoping to figure out how I might have gotten to the “registered” EFS-Web page. What did I miss?
I’ll explain. Continue reading “How the “new, safer and simpler log-in” works at the USPTO?”
A long time ago the way to log in was with a user ID and password. Then people started using two-factor authentication (2FA or “something you have, and something you know”). USPTO’s particularly poor choice for 2FA was the Entrust Java Applet. After a while some organizations started using a text message on a cell phone as the second factor. This turns out to be a really poor choice as well because it is very easy to hack.
The smart way to do this nowadays is TOTP (time-based one-time password). For most people the way you do this is to install an authenticator app onto your smart phone, and you scan a QR code. The app displays a six-digit code that changes every thirty or sixty seconds. The code is the second factor.
The point of this article is to invite you to consider smarter ways to do TOTP. Continue reading “Being smart about TOTP (time-based one-time password)”
You’ve received the scary emails from USPTO, and the scary pop-up messages in PAIR, saying that “you will need to use a newer, safer, and simpler log-in … beginning in October 2018”.
There are some things that you really need to do now (if you have not already done so) if you are a USPTO patent practitioner. Each human being in your office needs to get a MyUSPTO user ID and password (if he or she has not already done so). Each human being in your office needs to set up TOTP with that user ID (if he or she has not already done so). And you need to attend some upcoming webinars in which USPTO will try to explain all of this very clearly.
I’ll explain. Continue reading “Things you need to do today if you are a USPTO patent practitioner”
I am delighted to be able to report that the Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC listservs are working again. Just now I successfully migrated the listservs from a previous hosting provider to a new hosting provider.
If you are a member of one or more of the listservs, you should have received one or more test emails in recent minutes, letting you know that the listservs are working again. Continue reading “Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC listservs are working again”
On October 1, 2018, the search fee for ISA/AU for filers in the RO/US will drop from $1722 to $1631.
If you were already planning to select IP Australia as your international searching authority, and if you are able to postpone your filing until October 1, you have an opportunity to save $91.
It’s test car time of year again for Summit County, Colorado. Here are ten of the approximately sixty camouflaged cars swarming around the streets and highways and the mountains of Colorado this week. They are testing next year’s car models to see how they perform in the thin air at an elevation of 9000 feet (2700 meters) or higher.
It’s not only that camouflage wrap is laid onto the cars. There are also fake body panels and bumps and contours taped into place under the camouflage wrap.
This is all to protect the industrial designs — postponing for as long as possible the day when a competitor will get to see exactly what next year’s models look like.