Yes, today is the day that the Hague Agreement enters into force in Samoa. Continue reading “Today is the day for Samoa and the Hague Agreement”
Today is the day for Samoa and the Hague Agreement
Today is the day for Samoa and the Patent Cooperation Treaty
The PCT enters into force today for Samoa.
Samoa already belongs to Madrid Protocol. The Hague Agreement also enters into force for Samoa today. Samoa has thus achieved the trifecta for international filing mechanisms.
The two-letter code for Samoa is “WS”.
JPO is now a Depositing Office for designs
(Update: We have a winner! A trendy, modern and up-to-date Japanese design practitioner has won the prize. Read the update blog article here.)
Design practitioners rely on the DAS system for the interchange of electronic certified copies of priority applications. Such a system becomes more and more useful as more and more Offices participate.
Today is a big day. Today, the Japanese Patent Office became a Depositing Office in the DAS system for industrial designs.
Continue reading “JPO is now a Depositing Office for designs”
Get your numbers in for the 2019 Tote Boards
It’s that time of year again. Get your numbers in if you want your firm to be listed in:
- the Eighth Annual US Design Patent Top Filers Tote Board
- the Fifth Annual US Trademark Registration Top Filers Tote Board
- the Fifth Annual US Utility Patent Top Filers Tote Board
- the Third Annual US Plant Patent Top Filers Tote Board
These Tote Boards will rank the top patent and trademark firms for carrying out filings in 2019 in these categories. The 2019 Tote Boards will join the previous fifteen Tote Boards which go back as far as 2012.
The closing date for getting in your numbers will be Friday, January 31, 2020.
Every year, some firm misses out by failing to get its numbers in by the closing date. Don’t be that firm! Get your numbers in early. Click here for the:
- response form for the 2019 (eighth annual) US design patent top filers tote board
- response form for the 2019 (fifth annual) US trademark registration top filers tote board
- response form for the 2019 (fifth annual) US utility patent top filers tote board
- response form for the 2019 (third annual) US plant patent top filers tote board
January 1, 2020 is a holiday at the USPTO
Wednesday, January 1, 2020 will be a federal holiday in the District of Columbia. This means the USPTO will be closed. This means that any action that would be due at the USPTO on January 1 will be timely if it is done by Thursday, January 2, 2020.
Today is the day for Viet Nam and the Hague Agreement
It will be recalled that I blogged recently that Viet Nam deposited its instrument of accession to the Hague Agreement on September 30, 2019. Thus today is the day. The Hague Agreement enters into force for Viet Nam today.
Today Viet Nam achieves the trifecta, with membership in the Patent Cooperation Treaty, the Madrid Protocol, and now the Hague Agreement.
The two-letter code for Viet Nam is “VN”.
Trademark Office has not backed down yet on post office boxes
Back on September 24th (blog article) a very high-up person in the Office of the Commissioner for Trademarks had telephoned me, promising me that Real Soon Now the Trademark Office would issue yet another Exam Guideline, doing the right thing about post office boxes. Unfortunately that has not happened. Trademark practitioners are starting to receive super-intrusive Office Actions demanding things like revealing the personal home addresses of clients. What can be done about all of this? Continue reading “Trademark Office has not backed down yet on post office boxes”
“Fewer”, not “less”
Update: it took more than two years, but the USPTO has just recently cleared this trouble ticket.
There’s a bit of bad grammar in Patentcenter. If you are using Patentcenter to look at a patent application, the number of inventors might exceed four. In that case you might click “show all inventors” to see all of the inventors. Then you would see a Patentcenter screen listing all of the inventors, an example of which appears at right.
You might then want to return to the normal screen that does not show all of the inventors. For this, the designers of Patentcenter chose the words “Show less inventors” which is wrong. A similar mistake is often made in stores where an overhead sign might say that the express checkout lane is for those with “ten or less items”. The correct wording would be “ten or fewer items”. You can see explanations of this here and here.
The correct way to say this in Patentcenter would, of course, be “Show fewer inventors”.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes the folks at USPTO to correct this mistake. (This is trouble ticket number CP10.) (Update. It took more than two years.)
Today is the day for Malaysia and the Madrid Protocol
Today is the day. As of today, a trademark owner in Malaysia can file a Madrid Protocol application to pursue protection in one or more Offices outside of Malaysia. Starting today, a trademark owner outside of Malaysia can file a Subsequent Designation to Malaysia (or can file a new Madrid Protocol application designating Malaysia).
The two-letter code for Malaysia is “MY”.
What these three things have in common?
Here are images showing three things, one of which is the two-factor authentication box on the USPTO web site. That box used to say “This is a computer that I trust and use regularly” (blog article, October 8, 2019) but recently the USPTO changed the wording of this box. Now it says “Remember this browser and do not ask again for 24 hours.” Although USPTO changed the wording in the box, I do not think USPTO changed anything about the actual function of the box. This prompts me to invite the reader to post a comment below if you can think of something that is similar about these three things.