Category: Trademarks

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It’s time to get in your numbers for the 2024 toteboards

Hello readers.  It is now 2025 and this means it is time to get in your numbers for the 2024 toteboards:

The goal is to recognize and rank law firms in the US based upon the numbers of US design patents, US utility patents, US plant patents, and US trademark registrations each firm obtained for clients in 2024.

The questionnaires will close on Friday, February 14, 2025.

Every year after I post the results of the toteboards, I get sad emails from firms that want me to accept their numbers late.  This would, of course, typically result in kicking other firms down in the rankings — other firms that got their numbers in on time.  Please help to reduce the number of such sad emails that I will receive this year.  Maybe you are a person at your firm who is responsible for getting these numbers in.  If so, please get your numbers in!  Otherwise, please forward this blog posting to somebody at your firm to make sure that somebody at your firm gets the numbers in for your firm.

You can see the previous toteboards here, going back to the earliest toteboard in 2012.

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poorly worded USPTO announcement

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Yes, I realize the subject line doesn’t actually narrow things down very much, in the sense that many USPTO announcements are poorly worded in one way or another.  But this one is breathtaking in the extremity of its poor wording.  See if you can catch it:

Planned maintenance
Customer Interaction Platform Contact Center Transition
The USPTO will transition our contact centers to a new platform beginning at midnight ET on Monday, October 28 and ending at midnight ET on Tuesday, October 29.
Users may experience longer wait times during the transition period.

(emphasis in original.)  Continue reading “poorly worded USPTO announcement”

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Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity CLE for patent and trademark attorneys

Colorado Rule 250.2(1)(a)(i) says that beginning January 1, 2023, every registered attorney must achieve at least two credit hours per reporting period in the area of equity, diversity, and inclusivity.

The Colorado office in charge of CLE lists three areas that are supposed to be covered in CLE courses about equity, diversity, and inclusivity, namely:

    • equal access to the legal system;
    • competent representation of diverse populations;
    • the recognition, mitigation, or elimination of bias in the legal profession or the legal system.

What may a patent attorney or trademark attorney do to respond in a meaningful way to licensure requirements regarding equity, diversity, and inclusivity?  In this webinar, join your presenter, Carl Oppedahl, in trying to figure out what the problems are, in such areas as patent and trademark prosecution, for which an EDI CLE requirement might be a solution.

When and where?  Thursday, September 5, 2024, Noon to 1:40 PM Mountain Time (100 minutes)

Format: Live webinar

For more information, or to register, click here.

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Ethics CLE – securing electronic communications

In nearly every state, ethics rules require a lawyer to make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.  Colorado Rule 1.6(c), for example, says:

A lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.

Does it violate ethics rules to use email in client communications?  Does it violate ethics rules to use ordinary text messaging on a mobile phone?  What about Skype, or Whatsapp, Viber or Signal?  Continue reading “Ethics CLE – securing electronic communications”

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EUIPO and Benelux are missing from Trademark Center

The executive summary is that the USPTO developers of Trademark Center made a big mistake in the coding of the priority claims in a trademark application — they failed to provide EUIPO and Benelux as trademark offices in which a priority application might have been filed.  In doing so, they failed to learn from the identical mistake that had been made by the USPTO developers of Patent Center, who had failed to provide EPO and OAPI and ARIPO and EAPO as patent offices in which a priority application might have been filed.  Continue reading “EUIPO and Benelux are missing from Trademark Center”

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Eleventh annual e-Trademarks reception was a success

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I am delighted to be able to report that the eleventh annual e-Trademarks reception went very well.  I think it was a complete success.  You can see a very nice group photo taken by listserv member Doug Isenberg, quoted at right.  Click to enlarge it.  You will see 48 attendees in the photo, taken toward the end of the evening.  Over the course of the event, some eighty attendees visited.  Celebrity attendees included Debbie Roenning, director of the Madrid Legal Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization, David Gooder, Commissioner for Trademarks of the USPTO, and Derrick Brent, Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO.

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e-Trademarks listserv is broken

(Update:  Namecheap has restored the function of the e-Trademarks listserv.   It took 56 hours and 24 emails back and forth, but yes the function of the listserv has been restored.)

Hello folks.  The e-Trademarks listserv has been broken for about 36 hours now.   What triggered this was that on May 1, 2024 the listserv system did what it always does on the first day of every month — it sends out monthly membership reminders.  In the case of the e-Trademarks listserv this was about 1227 email messages with nearly identical subject lines and very similar email body texts.  Our hosting service provider (Namecheap) then compared this number (1227) with the stated limit (for our type of hosting) which is ten thousand email messages per hour, and somehow wrongly concluded that we sent so many emails that it supposedly violated the stated limit.  And Namecheap imposed a shutdown on the e-Trademarks listserv.

Yes, I know, if a person carries out complicated math, a person can eventually arrive at a conclusion that the number 1227 is actually smaller than 10000 and not larger than 10000.  And I have tried to explain this to the “legal and abuse” department at Namecheap and I have thus far apparently failed to make myself clear to them on this seemingly subtle point.

This is not the first time that Namecheap has wrongly tagged our listserv traffic as supposedly being spam.  Yes, what happens often is that hundreds or a thousand emails get sent at the same time, with identical subject lines.  But that is exactly what a listserv is supposed to do!  If the listserv were to fail to send hundreds or a thousand emails get sent at the same time, with identical subject lines, that would mean the listserv is failing at its stated function.  I have gone through this bad movie with Namecheap several times, including the following:

    • May 1, 2024, case number PRB-650-91372
    • February 21, 2024, case number JET-420-91825
    • November 6, 2023, case number LZW-313-84957
    • January 9, 2023, case number KHX-716-74404

In the previous three cases, what eventually happened was Namecheap realizing that they were wrong to shut down the listserv and then they corrected their mistake.  Now we have this most recent case and again I guess it will be a matter of time before Namecheap corrects its mistake.

Okay, I have vented.  Thank you, readers, for listening.

Some time, hopefully soon, the Namecheap people will follow along with my explanation that 1227 is smaller than 10000 instead of larger.  And they will restore the e-trademarks listserv to service.