Author: Carl

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How to mail promotional post cards

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click to enlarge

Recently I scheduled a PCT Seminar which will take place in Silicon Valley in October.  One question was, how to publicize it?  And I realized that one possible approach would be to mail out post cards to people in Silicon Valley who are registered to practice before the USPTO.

So the question was, how to accomplish getting post cards sent to these people?

In the old days, the way one would accomplish this is to go to a local printer, get post cards printed, put stamps on them, and mail them.  Or you would obtain a postal permit and go through the many steps required to mail such post cards without putting stamps on the cards.  And of course one would need to print address labels and put the labels onto the cards.

Regular readers of this “office tech” department of my blog can guess what is coming next in this blog article.  Of course it turns out that nowadays there are Internet-based ways to do this that are much more efficient and very inexpensive. Continue reading “How to mail promotional post cards”

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Live in-person PCT Seminar in Redwood City, California in October

I will be teaching a live, in-person Patent Cooperation Treaty seminar October 16-18, 2018 in Redwood City, California.[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d12662.193970662394!2d-122.22871293619356!3d37.49497980044707!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x808fa257364cfbff%3A0xfa2b9aec28116101!2sCourtyard+by+Marriott+Redwood+City!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1533600727686&w=600&h=450]

For more information, or to register, click here.

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How long USPTO takes to publish a 371 case

A colleague in Minneapolis asked me the other day how long it takes the USPTO to publish an entry into the US national phase.

MPEP § 1120(IV) says:

The projected publication date normally will be the later of: (1) eighteen months from the earliest filing date claimed; or (2) fourteen weeks from the mailing date of the filing receipt. The publication process takes about fourteen weeks.

I identified our most recent half dozen published patent applications that were entries into the US national phase.  And another half dozen published patent applications from a year ago that were entries into the US national phase.  And arrived at some average publication delays.  It was nothing like fourteen weeks.

Continue reading “How long USPTO takes to publish a 371 case”

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Should USPTO ban non-electronic trademark filings?

When I was first in practice, many years ago, the only way to file a trademark application was on paper.  Another way to say this is that the rate of e-filing was zero percent.

The US Trademark Office introduced trademark e-filing on March 20, 2000.  The first-ever electronic US trademark application was filed at 10:30 AM on that day.  Later that day, I launched the E-Trademarks listserv, an online community that continues to be very active now in 2018.

I did not have an opportunity to e-file a US trademark application for the first time until ten days later, on March 30, 2000.

Interestingly, in those early days the way that an electronically filed US trademark application got examined was that somebody at the Trademark Office printed it out on paper, and then the printout was injected into the workflow as if it had been paper-filed.  It took almost a year for the Trademark Office to implement electronic workflow for the Examining Attorneys.

By now in 2018 the rate of e-filing, depending on your metric, is something in excess of 99%.  But it seems that 99% is not good enough for the Trademark Office.  The Trademark Office would like to eliminate that last 1%, as may be seen in the Federal Register notice of May 30, 2018.  The Trademark Office proposes to mandate that only e-filing be used for trademark filings, thus eliminating the option of paper filing except in certain narrow situations.

When I was first in practice, pretty much the only way that a group of trademark practitioners could make their view heard in a rulemaking proceeding was through a professional or industry association such as INTA or AIPLA.  In recent years, however, the E-Trademarks listserv has submitted comments.  You can see comments that the listserv submitted in 2016.  And just yesterday the E-Trademarks listserv submitted comments in the present rulemaking.  You can see the comments here.

 

 

 

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“Pegged” art units in the USPTO

In a previous blog article, I talked about the USPTO’s practice of not reporting pendency numbers bigger than 30.  Said differently, if a particular art unit has a backlog that extends further than 30 months into the future, the USPTO will not reveal the actual backlog but will instead report the number 30.  In the world of d’Arsonval meter movements, this would be like a meter that is “pegged” at 30.

There are 514 art units at the USPTO.  Right now in July of 2018, how many of those art units are “pegged”?  Which art units are “pegged”?

In the next blog article I will list some of the art units with the smallest backlogs.

Continue reading ““Pegged” art units in the USPTO”

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USPTO’s art units with the smallest backlogs

In a previous blog article I listed the fifty art units at the USPTO (out of 514 art units) that are “pegged”.  What this means is that the backlog for the art unit is so great that it is longer than 30 months, and the USPTO does not report a number bigger than 30 for the backlog.

What the alert reader might ask is, which are the art units with the smallest backlog?  Here is a list of the 49 art units which, in July of 2018, have a backlog of seven months or less. Continue reading “USPTO’s art units with the smallest backlogs”