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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.
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.
It’s not so very often that the US Supreme Court gets an opportunity to decide a case about a US design patent. Some months ago the Court granted certiorari as to one of the sub-issues in the smartphone litigation by Apple against Samsung. Today the Court decided this sub-issue. The decision, which I discuss below, comes nowhere near to bringing an end to that litigation. Perhaps more importantly for the world of design patents, the decision has ramifications for design patent law generally.
Continue reading “US Supreme Court decides a design patent case”
A week ago I blogged that filers filing things at WIPO would have an extra hour to get a same-day filing date. As of a week ago, you could file as late as 5 PM Mountain Time and still get a same-day filing date.
Now today things return to normal. To get a same-day filing date at WIPO, you will need to file by 4 PM.
It’s October, which means it’s time for the AIPLA annual meeting.
And it’s at the AIPLA annual meeting that AIPLA committees get new leadership. Each committee position (chair, vice-chair) normally has a term of two years. So in a particular October a two-year term might be half way through or might be beginning. About half of AIPLA’s committees thus change leadership in a particular October.
This year is the year for the Industrial Designs Committee to change leadership. The news is that the new chair of the Industrial Designs Committee is Richard Stockton of Banner & Witcoff, and the new vice-chair is James Aquilina of Design IP.
Richard and James are each very active in the world of design patents, having filed and prosecuted many design patent applications. Richard’s firm, Banner & Witcoff, has ranked in first place in the 2012 US Design Patent Toteboard, the 2013 US Design Patent Toteboard, the 2014 US Design Patent Toteboard, and the 2015 US Design Patent Toteboard.
This coming two years will be an important time for industrial designs. New countries, including China, are likely to join the Hague Agreement. Important court cases, including a Supreme Court case in Apple v. Samsung, are likely to be decided. It will be good to have Richard’s and James’s leadership.
Experienced filers in the Patent Cooperation Treaty, Madrid Protocol, and Hague Agreement systems (utility patents, trademarks, and industrial designs) know that it is important to keep always in mind when midnight will arrive in Geneva, where WIPO is located.
For a PCT filer, this matters because to get a same-day filing date, a PCT application being filed in RO/IB will need to be filed by 4 PM Mountain Time. The same is true for filing an Article 19 amendment. The same is true if you are using ePCT to file a Demand and Article 34 amendment.
For a Madrid filer, this matters among other things for the payment of decade renewal fees.
For a Hague filer, this matters for the the filing of an international design application at the IB.
The point of today’s post is that starting today, and for the next week, you get an extra hour to get a same-day filing date. The reason is that Europe and the US carry out their daylight saving time transitions on different days that are a week apart.
This means that you could file as late as 5 PM Mountain Time (instead of the usual 4 PM) and still get a same-day filing date.
Things will return to normal a week from now, on November 6, 2016.
Recently a bit of Hague housekeeping happened. Continue reading “A small bit of Hague housekeeping”
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.
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.
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.