The other day I sent a Section 71 document (a ten-year trademark renewal document) by means of the TEAS system to a foreign client for e-signature. The next day the TEAS system reported that the document had been e-signed. All that remained was for me to pay the $100 government fee. I figured this would be easy. I figured wrong. The Financial Manager system made it very difficult. The Financial Manager system locked my account and it was a lot of trouble getting things working again. Here are the details: Continue reading “Bad experience with Financial Manager”
Time to sign up for the 20th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar
The 20th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar is now open for registration.
This will be Monday and Tuesday, July 25 and 26, in Alexandria, Virginia.
As a reminder the AIPLA PCT Seminar is different from other PCT Seminars in many ways. One way that it is different is that it offers not only patent office speakers but also practitioners. There are speakers from Europe and from China who will talk about using the PCT to get protection in EPO and in China.
Yours truly is one of the speakers.
For more information, or to sign up, or to book a hotel room at the seminar hotel, click here.
Kuwait joins the PCT
Kuwait has joined the PCT. Here you see Ambassador Jamal M. I. Al-Ghunaim and Director General Francis Gurry at the ceremony which took place June 9. 
[photo credit: WIPO]
This brings the number of PCT members to 149. Continue reading “Kuwait joins the PCT”
The background music in the Nashville airport
A couple of weeks ago I had the honor of teaching a class at the annual meeting of the Tennessee Intellectual Property Law Association. It was a delightful time. The Association members made me feel welcome and the class went well. (I spoke about best practices for use of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.) But that’s not the point of today’s post. The point of today’s post is to comment on the background music in the Nashville airport. Continue reading “The background music in the Nashville airport”
Learning about Restoration of Priority
Today I gave a presentation on Restoration of Priority. This was at the AIPLA meeting in Minneapolis. Here was the audience. I guess about 150 people. Also on the dais were Robert Sachs, talking about Section 101 and Alice, and Suzannah Sundby, talking about Section 101 in the biotech/pharma world. You can download my slides here.
USPTO does better with PPH requests lately
Yesterday the USPTO published a graph showing progress in disposing of what had been a very discouraging backlog of unattended-to Patent Prosecution Highway
requests. Here is the graph:
From a glance at this graph, one might have the impression that the problem at the USPTO had started in October of 2015. In fact the problem dated from at least as early as November 2014, when I blogged about ever-increasing delays at the USPTO in granting PPH requests. In April of 2015 I had faxed a letter to Director Lee about this growing backlog.
USPTO’s graph indicates a backlog of unattended-to PPH requests of about 3200 cases in October 2015, reaching a peak of about 4000 in February 2016, and a notable drop to around 2400 as of a few weeks ago. (I note that our firm, all by itself, was responsible for something like 2% of all of these PPH cases.)
The interesting question is how this effort at the USPTO is working out nowadays for particular applicants. We try to track these things pretty closely at our firm, and here is what we see. Continue reading “USPTO does better with PPH requests lately”
Please attend the OPLF reception in Orlando
Will you be in Orlando, Florida at the time of the 2016 meeting of INTA (the International T
rademark Association)? Are you a member of the E-Trademarks Listserv? Are you with a trademark or patent firm located outside of the US? Or are you with a corporation? If so, we hope you will join the people of Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC at our reception for the E-Trademarks Listserv. Our reception will take place at B B King’s Blues Club from 5PM to 8PM on Tuesday, May 24.
To learn more abut the reception, and to RSVP, please click here.
Docketing PPH – chief sources of delay
What are the Best Practices for docketing PPH? What are the chief sources of delay that the practitioner hopes to control or minimize as part of the PPH docketing process? In this article I will try to answer these two questions. Continue reading “Docketing PPH – chief sources of delay”
Yet another nice thing about ePCT
The other day I stumbled quite by chance upon yet another nice thing about ePCT. In this blog article I will describe the nice thing. And the alert reader might be able to win a prize. Continue reading “Yet another nice thing about ePCT”
Get some PCT CLE in Nashville on May 6
Yours truly will speak at the Spring CLE program of the Tennessee Intellectual Property Law Association, on Friday, May 6 in Nashville, Tennessee. You can see the brochure here. I will lecture on best practices for use of the Patent Cooperation Treaty. I look forward to seeing lots of Tennessee patent practitioners at this program.