Category: Trademarks

In a previous blog article, I described that the Trademark Office has tried to flush down the memory hole all traces of the 6001 US trademark registration numbers that it communicated to its customers on May 10, 2022.  And indeed right now, the registration numbers themselves, and the registration date, have gotten scrubbed out from where they were previously stored in TSDR and in TESS.

But the Trademark Office slipped up.  As of today, the XML data that it provides for those 6001 trademark applications continues to report a “status code” of 700, which means “registered”, and a “status text” of “REGISTERED”, which of course means registered.

To do a thorough job of scrubbing away evidence of its big mistake of May 10, the Trademark Office would also need to restore the “status code” to whatever it was before May 10.

I have loaded the 6001 cases into my IP Badger.  If and when the USPTO manages to scrub the “status code 700” information, I will see it.

(Update:  the 6001 customers did eventually get their registration numbers back two weeks later, on May 24, 2022.  See blog article.)

(USPTO published an explanation of sorts.  Blog article.)

Orwell’s 1984 imagines a dystopian future with a “memory hole”, which Wikipedia defines as

any mechanism for the deliberate alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.

The morning of Tuesday, May 10, 2022 seemed like an ordinary Tuesday morning for trademark practitioners in the US.  Just like any other Tuesday, about six thousand US trademarks got registered.  But by Tuesday afternoon it became clear that this was no ordinary Tuesday.  By today (Friday the 13th), we see that the Trademark Office has gone down the memory hole, and has “disappeared” six thousand and one US trademark registrations.  Continue reading “Trademark Office goes down the memory hole”

The tenth e-Trademarks listserv reception took place as scheduled on Tuesday, May 3 in Washington, DC.   Listserv member Matt Curran has shared a couple of photographs that he took during the reception.  Continue reading “A successful tenth e-Trademarks listserv reception!”

The Tenth Annual e-Trademarks Listserv Reception will take place on Tuesday, May 3, 2022 (7PM to 9PM) in Washington, DC at the time of the INTA annual meeting.  Your host is yours truly.  For more information, or to RSVP, click here.

(Update:  the case is now before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)

(Update:  a letter has been sent.  See blog article.)

It is by now a couple of years ago that the Acting Commissioner for Trademarks promulgated a rule requiring each trademark applicant to reveal to the Trademark Office where he or she sleeps at night.  Not simply the state where he or she sleeps at night, not just the city where he or she sleeps at night, but the exact street address where he or she sleeps at night.  I call this the “where you sleep at night” rule.  Yesterday there was yet another development on the “where you sleep at night” rule.  Continue reading “The latest on the Commissioner for Trademarks wanting to know where trademark applicants sleep at night”