Registration is now open for USPTO’s Design Day 2017. The program includes: Continue reading “Register now for Design Day 2017”
Who is the Director of the USPTO?
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, by statute, any issued US patent or US trademark registration must be “signed by the Director”. So the question “who is the Director?” is not an idle question.
As of today (screen shot at right), the Department of Commerce web site still lists the position of Director as “vacant”.
Yesterday’s issued US patents and US trademark registrations bore Michelle Lee’s signature, just as on Tuesdays before.
Patents and trademark registrations “shall be signed by the Director”
(Corrected thanks to David Boundy, as to which Director succeeded which.)
Normally the statutory requirement that a patent issued by the USPTO, or a trademark registration certificate issued by the USPTO, “shall be signed by the Director” (35 U.S. Code § 153 and 15 U.S. Code § 1057) is sort of boring. But just now, the USPTO expressly refuses to say who is the Director of the USPTO. What does this mean for patents and trademark registrations that have issued on recent Tuesdays? Continue reading “Patents and trademark registrations “shall be signed by the Director””
Behind the scenes in PAIR and EFS-Web
One of the important listservs that all US patent practitioners should subscribe to is the PAIR listserv. This is a listserv designed, oddly enough, for users of PAIR. Earlier today, alert listserv member William B. Slate posted a screen shot from PAIR showing that the “search by customer number” menu was missing. And he’s right. It was missing. Later it returned in PAIR. William’s posting to the listserv prompted me to say a few words about how PAIR actually works and why it is actually cause for astonishment any time that PAIR actually works. Continue reading “Behind the scenes in PAIR and EFS-Web”
A documentary on industrial design
Netflix has a delightful documentary series on industrial design. You can read about it on the Netflix web site and you can see the official Netflix trailer. Here is an Engadget review.
First of the 2016 Tote Boards posted
The 2016 Design Patent Toteboard has been posted.
The response periods for the 2016 Utility Patent and 2016 Trademark toteboards is being extended from January 20 to January 23.
Several well-known firms that do trademark prosecution have not yet responded. If you know someone at one of these firms, you might want to pass along a reminder to them. These include:
- K&L Gates
- Leydig Voit
- Banner & Witcoff
- Head, Johnson & Kachigian
- Antionette M Tease PLLC
- Andrus Intellectual Property Law
- Lee & Hayes PLLC
- Chernoff Vilhauer LLP
- Dorsey & Whitney
- Alston & Bird LLP
- Arent Fox LLP
- Baker Botts L.L.P.
- Fross Zelnick
Tomorrow will be a federal holiday
In the EFS-Web listserv, alert listserv member Michele Cimbala points out that tomorrow will be a federal holiday in the District of Columbia for purposes of filings at the USPTO.
You can see this on the USPTO web site.
Anything that was due to be filed tomorrow, January 20, 2017 will be timely if filed the following Monday, January 23, 2017.
Get your numbers in for the 2016 design patent toteboard
A year ago I published the 2015 Design Patent Toteboard. Now it’s time to finalize and publish the 2016 Design Patent Toteboard.
The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients to obtain US design patents in 2016. It will rank the firms according to the number of US design patents obtained. Respondents are asked to report only US design patents for which the firm is listed on the front page of the granted patent. Please respond by January 15, 2017.
To respond, click here.
Cambodia joins the Hague Agreement
Cambodia deposited its instrument of accession to the Hague Agreement on November 25, 2016. This event brings the number of Hague Agreement members to 66.
Cambodia now belongs to all three of the filing mechanisms — Madrid Protocol (as of June 5, 3015), PCT (as of December 8, 2016), and the Hague Agreement (as of February 25, 2017).
The two-letter code for Cambodia is KH.
Who was quickest to report the Supreme Court design patent decision?
Old-timers like me will recall the old days when, to keep up to date about important developments like court decisions, the only choice was to subscribe to BNA’s PTCJ (Patent Trademark and Copyright Journal), a weekly print publication that at that time cost about $1000 per year. The average delay between an important event and a subscriber’s learning of the event was on the order of 7-10 days.
Nowadays of course we get our news via the Internet. But it is interesting to see the great variation in how long it takes for news of an important event to get around depending upon the particular distribution channel.
I’ll take as an example yesterday’s important Supreme Court decision in Samsung v. Apple. This is the first time in decades that the Supreme Court has taken up a design patent case, and the outcome is an important one for the world of design patents. (I blogged about the decision yesterday.)
The first place that this event got reported was the mailing list of the AIPLA Industrial Designs committee, at 9:34 AM Mountain Time. The poster was James Aquilina, vice-chair of that committee, and the result was that all of the members of that AIPLA committee learned of this development within minutes of the Supreme Court’s release of the decision.
The second place that this event got reported was the Industrial Designs listserv, at 10:46 AM Mountain Time. The poster was alert listserv member Margaret Polson, and the result was all of the members of that listserv learned of this development. (If you have not already done so, you should join the Industrial Designs listserv, which is free of charge.)
The third place that this event got reported was the Patentpractice listserv (sponsored by Washburn University School of Law), at 11:11 AM Mountain Time. The poster was alert listserv member Rick Neifeld, and the result was that all of the members of that listserv learned of this development.
James, Margaret and Rick were each filing US design patent applications for clients long before it was fashionable to do so. They scooped every mainstream publication including the New York Times and USA Today (mentioned below).
The fourth place that this event got reported was the email newsletter of the firm of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP (“MBHB Snippets“). This was at 1:56 PM Mountain Time.
The fifth place that this got reported was the Ant-Like Persistence blog, in its industrial designs section, at 4:29 PM Mountain TIme. (If you’ve not already subscribed to that blog, now is the time to do so.)
The sixth place that this got reported was the email newsletter of the firm of Maier & Maier PLLC. This was at 4:53 PM Mountain Time.
By that point the news had reached the mainstream media, with articles in the New York Times, USA Today and elsewhere.