Category: Industrial Designs

I have had a moment to reflect upon the letter that just got sent from Eighty-four Practitioners and Applicants to the Executive Director of the European Union Intellectual Property Office.  (You can read about it here.)

I am very proud and honored to be among the eighty-four signers of this letter. I am personally acquainted with some of the signers.

One of the signers whose name I recognize is an individual who filed one design application in EUIPO and then filed in the US and had to go to a lot of trouble to obtain a physical certified copy to perfect the priority claim in the US. That individual knows as well as anyone does, what a benefit will flow to the design community if and when EUIPO joins DAS.

Other signers whose names I recognize include some of the leading lights in the world of very experienced design protection practitioners, some of whom were serving design clients long before I ever was.

Thank you to those who signed. Let’s hope that the EUIPO chooses to join DAS and chooses to do it soon.

Carl

The letter to Christian Archambeau, the Executive Director of EUIPO, garnered eighty-four signatures and got sent out today by Priority Mail Express.  You can see a PDF scan of the letter here and you can track the courier package here.  The letter got delivered on April 24, 2020.  Here is the “ask”:

We write to you as design practitioners and applicants for protection of industrial designs. Many of the undersigned are members of the Industrial Designs Listserv, a community of design practitioners.

We are writing to request that the European Union Intellectual Property Office become a participating office in the WIPO Digital Access Service (DAS).

We thank you for your consideration of this request.

Would you like it if EUIPO were to become a participating Office in the WIPO Digital Access Service (DAS) system?

For example, suppose you have obtained a Registered Community Design (RCD) in the EUIPO, and now you wish to file a US design patent application claiming priority from that RCD.  To perfect the priority claim at the USPTO, you need to somehow obtain a certified copy of the RCD application and you need to file it at the USPTO.  It is not easy to obtain a paper certified copy of the RCD application.  If only EUIPO were to become a participating Office in the DAS system, then you could easily use DAS as the way to get a certified copy from EUIPO to USPTO.

Here is your opportunity to join others in a request to EUIPO that it join the DAS system.  A letter will get sent to the EUIPO asking it to join the DAS system.  If you wish, you can become a signer of that letter.  To read the letter and to see how to sign, click here.

(Update:  The webinar took place and I think it went well.  To download the presentation slides or to watch a recording of the webinar, click here.)

It was all planned that I was going to be one of the speakers at USPTO Design Day 2020.  I was going to be presenting on the topic of DAS and Designs.  But Design Day got canceled.  What should I do with my presentation slides?  I’ll give the same presentation, but I’ll do it online.  This will be a free-of-charge webinar.  Maybe you’d like to attend, or maybe you know someone who’d like to attend.  Continue reading “Free webinar: Learn about DAS and Designs”

It is with regret that I report that USPTO 2020 Design Day, previously scheduled for April 23, 2020 (blog article), has been canceled.  I was really looking forward to attending the meeting.  I was scheduled to serve among the presenters at the meeting, speaking about the DAS system.

I will provide this presentation about the DAS system in a free-of-charge webinar on Tuesday, March 31.   To find out more about the webinar, or to register, click here.