This photograph shows an electrical power distribution line in beautiful Summit County, Colorado, at an altitude of about 9100 feet above sea level. The first reader to post a comment correctly explaining the function of the white triangle will win a nice piece of swag — an Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC digital voltmeter.
Photos and video from the Sixth Annual E-Trademarks listserv reception
The Sixth Annual E-Trademarks Listserv reception took place on May 24, 2016 at B B King’s Blues Club in Orlando at the time of the INTA annual meeting.
To see photos and video from the reception, click here. If you enjoyed yourself at the reception, please post a comment below.
Time to sign up for the 20th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar
The 20th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar is now open for registration.
This will be Monday and Tuesday, July 25 and 26, in Alexandria, Virginia.
As a reminder the AIPLA PCT Seminar is different from other PCT Seminars in many ways. One way that it is different is that it offers not only patent office speakers but also practitioners. There are speakers from Europe and from China who will talk about using the PCT to get protection in EPO and in China.
Yours truly is one of the speakers.
For more information, or to sign up, or to book a hotel room at the seminar hotel, click here.
Kuwait joins the PCT
Kuwait has joined the PCT. Here you see Ambassador Jamal M. I. Al-Ghunaim and Director General Francis Gurry at the ceremony which took place June 9. 
[photo credit: WIPO]
This brings the number of PCT members to 149. Continue reading “Kuwait joins the PCT”
Uploading JPG files to your Hague case
As patent practitioners have known for many years, if you were to try to upload a JPG file into EFS-Web, the system would puke on the file.
Until now, as I will explain. It requires a bit of background. In November of 2014 the USPTO answered a question that had been on everyone’s lips for many months, namely “What will the series code be for Hague cases?” The answer turned out to be 35. A year and a half passed, and in February of 2015 the USPTO assigned the first application number to a Hague case. (It was 35/500001.) What many people might not know is that if the application that you open in EFS-Web happens to be a “35” case, you can upload a JPG file. Here is a screen shot that shows this:
What is the problem for which this new capability is the solution? Continue reading “Uploading JPG files to your Hague case”
Comments are in on proposed TTAB rules
June 3 was the last date on which a would-be commenter could comment upon the TTAB’s proposed rules published April 4, 2016. I am pleased to be able to report that the E-Trademarks Listserv (ETL) was among the commenters. Other commenters included “the big four”, that is, IPO, ABA-IPL, INTA, and AIPLA. You can see all sixteen comments here. The ETL comments focused on three issues:
- whether it is a good idea for the TTAB to once again resume responsibility for carrying out service of process (a responsibility that had been shifted to the plaintiff in 2007);
- TTAB’s proposed requirement that the plaintiff figure out what email address the TTAB should use when carrying out service of process via email; and
- TTAB’s proposed limiting the number of Requests to Admit to 75.
I’ll summarize the positions taken by the various commenters on these three issues. Continue reading “Comments are in on proposed TTAB rules”
The new best messaging app that you should be using
(Update: I no longer recommend Whatsapp. I now recommend Signal. See blog article.)
The messaging app that you should be using is Whatsapp. Drop the other messaging apps that you have been using, and switch to Whatsapp. Urge your messaging pals to migrate to Whatsapp. Why? Because it uses end-to-end encryption and Perfect Forward Secrecy. I will explain why this is so important.
Continue reading “The new best messaging app that you should be using”
The background music in the Nashville airport
A couple of weeks ago I had the honor of teaching a class at the annual meeting of the Tennessee Intellectual Property Law Association. It was a delightful time. The Association members made me feel welcome and the class went well. (I spoke about best practices for use of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.) But that’s not the point of today’s post. The point of today’s post is to comment on the background music in the Nashville airport. Continue reading “The background music in the Nashville airport”
Learning about Restoration of Priority
Today I gave a presentation on Restoration of Priority. This was at the AIPLA meeting in Minneapolis. Here was the audience. I guess about 150 people. Also on the dais were Robert Sachs, talking about Section 101 and Alice, and Suzannah Sundby, talking about Section 101 in the biotech/pharma world. You can download my slides here.
USPTO does better with PPH requests lately
Yesterday the USPTO published a graph showing progress in disposing of what had been a very discouraging backlog of unattended-to Patent Prosecution Highway
requests. Here is the graph:
From a glance at this graph, one might have the impression that the problem at the USPTO had started in October of 2015. In fact the problem dated from at least as early as November 2014, when I blogged about ever-increasing delays at the USPTO in granting PPH requests. In April of 2015 I had faxed a letter to Director Lee about this growing backlog.
USPTO’s graph indicates a backlog of unattended-to PPH requests of about 3200 cases in October 2015, reaching a peak of about 4000 in February 2016, and a notable drop to around 2400 as of a few weeks ago. (I note that our firm, all by itself, was responsible for something like 2% of all of these PPH cases.)
The interesting question is how this effort at the USPTO is working out nowadays for particular applicants. We try to track these things pretty closely at our firm, and here is what we see. Continue reading “USPTO does better with PPH requests lately”