Author: Carl

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Please attend the OPLF reception in Orlando

Will you be in Orlando, Florida at the time of the 2016 meeting of INTA (the International Tbbking-logorademark Association)?  Are you a member of the E-Trademarks Listserv?  Are you with a trademark or patent firm located outside of the US? Or are you with a corporation?  If so, we hope you will join the people of Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC at our reception for the E-Trademarks Listserv.  Our reception will take place at B B King’s Blues Club from 5PM to 8PM on Tuesday, May 24.

To learn more abut the reception, and to RSVP, please click here.

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Post-reg astonishingly fast all of a sudden

A few months ago, trademark practitioners were comparing experiences with backlogs at “post-reg”.  By this we mean the branch of the USPTO that handles papers filed after a trademark has registered.  (The forum in which they discussed these backlogs is the E-trademarks listserv.)  As of a few months ago, they were seeing backlogs in the range of 2-3 months.  But recently things seem to have improved drastically. Continue reading “Post-reg astonishingly fast all of a sudden”

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USPTO grants first-ever design patent from a Hague application

The USPTO has granted the first-ever US design patent from an international design (Hague) application.

The international design application was filed pro se on May 13, 2015 by a German company called Schwan-Stabilo Cosmetics GmbH & Co. KG. The application was filed directly at the International Bureau and it designated Korea and the US.  It did not claim priority from any earlier application.

The IB published the application on June 5, 2015 and the USPTO received the application from the IB on that day. The USPTO gave application number 35/500,001 to the application.

The USPTO mailed a Filing Receipt on July 7, 2015. The case got assigned to an Examiner on October 6, 2015 and the Examiner allowed the case eleven days later. The USPTO sent the Notice of Allowance to the IB on October 20, 2015. The applicant paid the Issue Fee directly to the IB. The OB sent the Issue Fee to the USPTO on November 30, 2015.

USPTO issued the patent on April 26, 2016 as US Patent Number Des. 754922.  You can see it here.

No Assignment has been recorded for this application.  No IDS got filed in this application.  The application was never touched by US patent counsel.

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Long backlogs at Global Entry interview offices

(See update here.)

I guess I should not be surprised that the USPTO is not the only US government agency with long backlogs.ge

Someone I know recently applied for Global Entry — the very handy program that speeds up immigrations entry into the US and gets you into TSA’s Precheck security screening.  He then received the “conditional approval” and an invitation letter to attend an interview at a Global Entry interview office.

That’s great!  All he has to do now is make an appointment at one of the interview offices, and show up for the appointment, and he will be a member of Global Entry.

Except that interviews are not easy to get.

  • At San Francisco airport, the earliest available appointment is October 23.  Five months from now.
  • At Portland (Oregon) airport, the earliest available appointment is September 26.  Four months from now.
  • At Denver airport, there is simply no appointment available no matter how long you are willing to wait.

This is quite a surprise to me.  It seems to me that the Global Entry folks need to staff up the interview offices appropriately so that there are enough people to do the interviews without delays of four and five months (or forever in the case of Denver).

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New Financial Manager system connects with more and more USPTO e-commerce systems

USPTO launched its “Financial Manager” system about two weeks ago.  (At the same time, USPTO permanently shut down the wonderful “Financial Profile” system that had served users well for many years.)

When the Financial Manager (“FM”) system launched two weeks ago, it was connected with one e-commerce system, namely the system for paying patent maintenance fees.  I blogged about the new maintenance fee payment system here.

Today the USPTO connected its new FM system to TEAS, the e-filing system for trademark application. I blogged about this new connection here.

This means that trademark filers no longer have to key in an entire credit card number when paying a fee. The filer can simply select the card from a drop-down list of stored payment mechanisms.

Today the USPTO also connected its new FM system to the online ordering system of the Office of Public Records. This ordering system, with the catchy name “OEMS”, now likewise permits you to select a payment mechanism from a stored list. This saves you having to key in detailed credit card information when placing such orders.

I have heard that in about a week, USPTO plans to connect FM to the EFS-Web system.

It’s clear from these developments that we all need to get familiar with FM. Presumably you configured your FM user accounts two weeks ago. But if you have not done so yet, you can visit the Financial Manager setup page to set things up.

Have you used FM?  Please post a comment below to let readers know how it went for you.

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Paying maintenance fees has gotten easier

In the old days (more than two weeks ago), when you were paying some maintenance fees, you had to treat each individual maintenance fee as a separate task.  For each maintenance fee, you had to hand-key six categories of information — the credit card number, the expiration date, the CCV code, the cardholder name, the billing address, and the billing Zip code.  For a filer who was paying more than one maintenance fee, this was tedious.  But two weeks ago, things got easier.

Continue reading “Paying maintenance fees has gotten easier”