Category: Industrial Designs

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poorly worded USPTO announcement

click to enlarge

Yes, I realize the subject line doesn’t actually narrow things down very much, in the sense that many USPTO announcements are poorly worded in one way or another.  But this one is breathtaking in the extremity of its poor wording.  See if you can catch it:

Planned maintenance
Customer Interaction Platform Contact Center Transition
The USPTO will transition our contact centers to a new platform beginning at midnight ET on Monday, October 28 and ending at midnight ET on Tuesday, October 29.
Users may experience longer wait times during the transition period.

(emphasis in original.)  Continue reading “poorly worded USPTO announcement”

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After a ten-year run, AFCP comes to a close

There has always been a problem that some Examiners fish for unnecessary continuations and RCEs.  If an applicant can be teased into filing a continuation or an RCE, the Examiner picks up two more “counts”.

One of the USPTO’s initiatives to try to reduce this problem happened in 2013 — the After Final Consideration Program (AFCP).  Now after a ten-year run, the USPTO has announced (Federal Register notice) that it will discontinue AFCP.

During the ten years that AFCP was available, our firm used it many dozens of times.  I estimate that in perhaps 25% of cases, it did save us from having to file an otherwise unnecessary continuation or RCE.  Now with the AFCP initiative gone, we will surely face renewed levels of fishing for continuations and RCEs by some Examiners.

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Three days left to get in your numbers for the 2023 Toteboards

Three days from now will be the end of your opportunity to get your numbers in for the 2023 Toteboards (blog article).

So far we have the following results:

    • For the Trademark toteboard, we have 27 responses accounting for 6321 trademark registrations.
    • For the US plant patent toteboard, we have 5 responses accounting for 137 US plant patents.
    • For the US design patent toteboard, we have 20 responses accounting for 2111 US design patents.
    • For the US utility patent toteboard, we have 22 responses accounting for 11531 US utility patents.

If you have not already gotten your numbers in, now is the time to do it (blog article).

 

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Get your numbers in for the 2023 toteboards

Hello colleagues.   It is time to get your numbers in for the 2023 toteboards.  The toteboards have a goal of recognizing the intellectual property firms that filed the most US utility patent applications, filed the most US design patent applications, filed the most US plant patent applications, and filed the most US trademark applications, and saw them through to issuance and registration.

The submission forms will close toward the end of the day on Friday, February 9, 2024.    Please don’t dawdle with this.  Please just hand in your numbers and be done with it.

The 2023 toteboards will get published in February of 2024.  Every year, we publish the toteboards, and after that, some firm comes in begging and pleading to hand in its numbers late.  Please don’t do that.  Please hand in your numbers no later than Friday, February 9, 2024!

How to do toteboard searches.

You can see the past toteboards, including the 2022 toteboards, here.

    • To hand in your numbers for the Ninth Annual utility patent toteboard, click here.
    • To hand in your numbers for the Ninth Annual trademark toteboard, click here.
    • To hand in your numbers for the Twelfth Annual design patent toteboard, click here.
    • To hand in your numbers for the Fifth Annual plant patent toteboard, click here.
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Has your membership in a listserv been disabled due to “excessive bounces”?

(Updated November 25, 2023 to recognize that if your email service provider is bouncing the normal listserv postings, your email service provider may also have bounced the warning message that was sent to you about your email service provider bouncing the normal listserv postings.)

In recent days, dozens of members of our intellectual property listservs have received (or at least have been sent) email warnings that start like this:

Your membership in the mailing list <blah> has been disabled due to excessive bounces.  The last bounce received from you was dated <recent date>. You will not get any more messages from this list until you re-enable your membership. You will receive 2 more reminders like this before your membership in the list is deleted.

If you received such an email warning, this is because (a) you belong to one or more of our listservs, and (b) you selected Microsoft (outlook) to be your email service provider.   But of course another possibility is that you did not receive this warning email message, because your email service provider bounced the warning email message too.  What should you do next? Continue reading “Has your membership in a listserv been disabled due to “excessive bounces”?”

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Listervs have been migrated to a new server redux

(Update:  be sure to look at Richard Schafer’s comment below, about how to whitelist in Microsoft’s system.)

Hello to the members of the various listservs hosted by Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC.   Five days ago I migrated the listservs to a new server.  For many members of the listservs, it looks like this migration has gone largely unnoticed after a few test postings of yesterday and today.  But for some members, this migration has not worked out well, because of the behavior of their email service provider, which is called “Outlook” from Microsoft.  Continue reading “Listervs have been migrated to a new server redux”

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Listervs have been migrated to a new server

(Update:  Microsoft is behaving badly about this.  See blog article.)

Hello to the members of the various listservs hosted by Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC.   Yesterday I migrated the listservs to a new server.  For many members of the listservs, hopefully this will go largely unnoticed after a few test postings of yesterday and today.  But for some members, this will be extra work and trouble.  I am sorry about this.

Here are details.

Whitelisting.  Previously the listservs were on a server at IP address 162.255.116.157.  Now the listservs are on a server at IP address 66.29.132.148.  Maybe you had previously set up a whitelisting entry in your email system to allow messages from 162.255.116.157 to reach you.  If so, you may find that now you need to set up a whitelisting entry in your email system to allow messages from 66.29.132.148 to reach you.  (Update:  Microsoft is behaving badly about this.  See blog article.)

Member password.  This migration caused a reset of your password for your subscription to the listserv.   To get your password figured out again, you might find it necessary to go to one of the eleven links below (for the listserv that you need to reset the password in) and click on the link, and follow the process for resetting your password.

Digest numbering.  If you are a digest subscriber, you will see that this migration has reset the digest numbering to volume 1.

I am sorry about the extra work and trouble.

Links to user information pages for the listservs.  The listservs affected by this server migration include:

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Argentina intellectual property office becomes even more trendy, modern and up-to-date

click to visit INPI web site

Today is the day!  Yes, today is the day (see previous blog article) on which the National Institute of Industrial Property of Argentina becomes a Depositing Office for national industrial design applications and national trademark applications.  Continue reading “Argentina intellectual property office becomes even more trendy, modern and up-to-date”