Bluesky: @oppedahl.com
May 13, 2015 is an extremely important day for US design patent filers. Why? Because if you are smart about May 13, you can get a US design patent with a fifteen-year patent term rather than a fourteen-year patent term.
Continue reading “The importance of May 13, 2015 for US design patent filers”
The Hague Agreement is the international filing system for design protection that corresponds to the PCT filing system for international utility patent protection and the Madrid filing system for international trademark protection. The progress of the United States toward membership and participation in the Hague Agreement has been slow and at times tortuous. As I blogged here, President Clinton signed the treaty in 1999. Many years passed before the Senate ratified it in 2007. Congress needed to pass enabling legislation which finally happened in 2012. Next the USPTO needed to promulgate proposed Rules, which it did in 2013. The next important step was for the United States to deposit an “instrument of accession” to the Agreement with WIPO.
Interestingly somehow the United States and Japan managed to coordinate their efforts, and the two countries deposited their instruments of accession on the same day, Friday, February 13, 2015. You can see WIPO’s press release here. 
And at right is a photograph (courtesy of WIPO) showing the historic event. You can see US Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto handing the Instrument of Accession to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.
Continue reading “US makes more progress toward the Hague Agreement”
Yes, the results are in. The Ant-Like Persistence blog is delighted to be able to present the 2014 US Design Patent Toteboard. This toteboard lists the forty-three highest ranked firms according to the number of US design patents which they obtained for clients. One corporation also chose to respond and is listed in the toteboard. These filers between them obtained about 24% of all of the US design patents in 2014.
You can also see corresponding toteboards for 2013 and 2012.
Here are some of the firms which by now have sent in their US design patent numbers at this questionnaire.
These firms between them obtained about one-sixth of all of the US design patents that were granted in 2014.
We now have responses from more than two dozen law firms which between them have obtained about one-seventh of all of the US design patents that were granted in 2014. Conspicuous by their absence, however, are a few well-known firms that did quite a lot of US design patent work in 2014, including the following:
If you know someone at one of these firms, you might drop them a note and let them know they have six days left to respond with their information. The toteboard will close on January 31 and the rankings will be posted in early February.
Design patents are suddenly important — everybody gets that by now. There are a handful of practitioners who were active in the design patent area long before design patents became fashionable, and Chris Carani is one of that handful. This next Wednesday Chris will host a free of charge live audio program that you can and should attend if your schedule permits.
Continue reading “Free live audio program on design patent enforcement issues”
About 23,000 US design patents issued last year. The firms that have thus far responded to be listed in the Design Patent Tote Board between them filed about 2300 design patents, or about ten percent of that total.
So as may be seen, there are still quite a few patent firms that have not yet reported their design patent totals. Here are some of the well-known patent firms that have not yet reported their design patent totals:
If you know somebody at one of these firms, I’d be grateful if you can pass along to them a link to this blog post, so that they can complete and submit the questionnaire. Submissions will close January 31 and the tote board will be published in February of 2015.
The arrival of a new year prompts every blogger to look back to see which postings in the previous year reached a lot of eyeballs.
Well, by far the most-read posting for all of 2014 in Ant-like Persistence was “A little-known USPTO initiative to reduce the backlog“. This posting, dating from early April of 2014, might be of great interest to patent practitioners who missed the original posting.
In second place was “USPTO is closed today, Monday, March 17“. This was the posting that told readers that it was a snow day in Washington. It meant that anything that needed to be filed in the USPTO on Monday March 17 could be postponed until Tuesday March 18 and still be timely.
The people who subscribe to this blog are likely to hear of such USPTO closings in the future. So if you have not already done so, subscribe to the blog. And if you have a friend or colleague who would like to hear about it when the USPTO has a snow day, encourage them to subscribe to the blog.
As you will recall from this posting, I will be publishing a report in February of 2015 listing patent firms and the numbers of US design patents they obtained for clients in 2014. In that posting I invited each firm to submit its count of US design patents obtained in 2014 (and 2013, and 2012). As of right now, five patent firms have responded. Between them, those five firms obtained 418 US design patents in 2014, 443 US design patents in 2013, and 432 US design patents in 2012.
There are 29 days left for submissions. There are perhaps a hundred or so patent firms that did significant numbers of US design patent filings that issued in 2014, meaning that there are perhaps 95 or so submissions still to come. If you are with a firm that obtained US design patents for clients in 2014, I encourage you to read the original posting to see an easy way to do the database search to count your US design patent grants, and to send in your submission.
And if you know someone who is with a firm that obtained US design patents for clients in 2014, I encourage you to pass this posting along to that person so that they will know about the opportunity to respond.
How many US design patents did your firm handle in 2014? The last ones for 2014 issued yesterday, Tuesday, December 30. So now you can figure out how many you filed in 2014, and send in your submission for our ranking. Here is the questionnaire for you to complete and submit.
I will publish the results in February of 2015.
Continue reading “Submit your design patent total for the 2014 US design patent rankings”