Recently a bit of Hague housekeeping happened. Continue reading “A small bit of Hague housekeeping”
How did you hear about Design Day 2016?
I was honored to have an opportunity to play a small role in the planning for Design Day 2016. So I have reviewed the attendee evaluations just now. One of the evaluation questions was “how did you hear about Design Day 2016?” And I am delighted to be able to report that some of the respondents said they heard about it from this very blog, the Ant-Like Persistence blog.
Patent assignments now visible on the web!
The USPTO did a nice thing today. As of today, you
can receive a PDF copy of a recorded patent assignment!
Until now, the only way to get a copy of a patent assignment was to place an order with the Order Entry Management System and pay $25. And then wait a couple of weeks for the copy to show up in the mail.
But now, thanks to alert reader Rick Neifeld, I have learned that you can get it for free, and you can get it instantly. The way to make this work requires the user to learn a few steps, but once you learn it, it’s easy.
A first thing to appreciate is that you can’t start with the “assignments” tab of PAIR. You need to go to Assignments on the Web (Patents). Then do a search. You can search on any of the usual things — application number, patent number, whatever. Eventually you will figure out the reel and frame number that you care about. Click on the reel and frame number to get to a page that is specific to your reel and frame number. You will then see a page like the screen shot above (click on the image to see it bigger). Look for a barely visible icon just to the right of the word “details” (marked with a green rectangle), and click on it. What will pop up is a PDF copy of the recordation cover letter and the assignment itself.
This is a welcome development at the USPTO! USPTO deserves kudos for providing this helpful service.
Excellent guidance on Hague design drawings
When you get ready to file an international design application (a “Hague application”) you have no choice but to try to figure out what to do about drawings, with the goal of (hopefully) satisfying the requirements of each Office that you are planning to designate.
In the early days of Hague, most Offices that belonged to Hague were “registration” Offices, meaning that they checked formalities but did not do much in the way of substantive examination. But in recent times more and more Offices that have recently joined are Offices that do carry out some amount of substantive examination. Perhaps the Office in which an applicant would be most likely to run into trouble would be the USPTO.
And indeed it is true that some Hague applications that designate the US have been running into problems because of the drawings.
WIPO, together with various of the designated Offices, have developed guidelines for applicants. You can see the guidelines here.
These guidelines should be studied by any applicant that is planning to designate Hungary, Japan, Kyrgystan, South Korea, Moldova, Romania, Syria, or the US.
Keep in mind that for a US applicant, one option offered by the Hague Agreement is that the US applicant could designate the US. (I call this a “hairpin turn”.) Such a US applicant should likewise study these guidelines.
Brexit and intellectual property
By now we have all seen the news. The voters of the UK have decided to leave European Union. I frankly feel this was not the best decision, but I will save my own detailed comments on this decision for later discussions.
For many readers the near-term question is how this will affect intellectual property protection. Here’s my take on this.
Continue reading “Brexit and intellectual property”
Uploading JPG files to your Hague case
As patent practitioners have known for many years, if you were to try to upload a JPG file into EFS-Web, the system would puke on the file.
Until now, as I will explain. It requires a bit of background. In November of 2014 the USPTO answered a question that had been on everyone’s lips for many months, namely “What will the series code be for Hague cases?” The answer turned out to be 35. A year and a half passed, and in February of 2015 the USPTO assigned the first application number to a Hague case. (It was 35/500001.) What many people might not know is that if the application that you open in EFS-Web happens to be a “35” case, you can upload a JPG file. Here is a screen shot that shows this:
What is the problem for which this new capability is the solution? Continue reading “Uploading JPG files to your Hague case”
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.
A nice patent drawing book for the coffee table
The 2015 US Design Patent Tote Board has a firm at tenth place, namely QuickPate
nts, founded by patent agent Kevin Prince. Just today I learned that he has written a nice book about patent drawings. The book does not promote Kevin or his firm, but simply celebrates the delightful world of patent drawings. The book, which I recommend, would look nice on anybody’s coffee table.
Time of day at RO/IB returns to normal for US filers
On March 13 I blogged that US filers filing PCT applications in RO/IB needed to pay extra close attention to what time it is in Switzerland. The reason is that in the US, Daylight Saving Time happened on March 13. But did not happen on that day in Switzerland. This meant that for the past two weeks, a US-based filer in (for example) the Mountain Time zone would be able to e-file in RO/IB as late as 5PM and still get a same-day filing date. This differed from the usual drop-dead time of 4PM.
Today (March 27, 2016) is the day that Daylight Saving Time happens in Switzerland. The consequence of this is that the time difference between the US filer’s time zone and the time in RO/IB is back to normal. So for a US-based filer in the Mountain Time zone, the drop-dead time returns today to the usual 4PM.
This change also affects a US-based filer filing a design application in the IB’s Hague Agreement e-filing system.
Fourteen seats left for USPTO’s Design Day 2016
As of today, there are fourteen seats left for USPTO’s Design Day 2016. For more information about Design Day and to learn how to register, click here.