Next week I will be on the road again, to co-host the two least commercial and, I think, most fun, events at INTA time in Boston, namely Meet the Bloggers XV and the Ninth Annual E-Trademarks Listserv Reception. I hope you will attend.
An anonymous donor for E-Trademarks reception

The E-Trademarks reception is now in its ninth year of tradition, taking place as usual during INTA time, this year in Boston.
As in many past years, generous donors help to sponsor the reception, which you can read about here. You can see the twelve sponsors in the poster at right. Two posters like this will be on easels at the event.
As you can see from the prominent place on the poster, five of the sponsors were particularly generous. But what I find extremely … I guess heart-warming … is that one of the particularly generous sponsors gave on condition that the sponsor’s name not be disclosed.
The philosopher Maimonides is among many who describe the giving of an anonymous gift as one of the highest levels of giving. Our anonymous sponsor said to me:
OK. Look for my personal check … on condition you will not mention my name but give credit for it only to:
Anonymous TM Administrator, as a tip of the hat to a remarkable community on behalf all participating and lurking administrators and paralegals.
So, maybe you would like to enjoy a drink with this remarkable community. If so, drop by next Tuesday in Boston. Maybe unbeknownst to you, you will click a wine glass or share a smile with this anonymous trademark administrator.
A Pound of Feathers!
(Note: All users of Feathers! need to read all of this article.)
The old aphorism asks “what weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?” And of course the answer is they weigh the same. But when it comes to the Feathers! software, today we have a metaphor.
What got me thinking in a philosophical way about this was that late yesterday the telephone rang in my office, and it was the Commissioner for Trademarks, Mary Boney Denison, calling for me. Continue reading “A Pound of Feathers!”
Meet the Bloggers XV
MEET THE BLOGGERS, widely recognized as the best non-INTA event ever devised, will be convened for the fifteenth time (thus “MTB XV”) on Monday, May 20th, 8:00 – 10:00 PM, at Kings Dining and Entertainment (a/k/a KINGS BOWL), 60 Seaport Boulevard (a few blocks from the Convention Center). Come and meet some of the best trademark attorneys in the world, and while you’re at it say hello to the bloggers. For details, directions, and the RSVP link, go HERE.
The fourth annual US Trademark Toteboard is out
It is my honor to post the fourth annual US Trademark Toteboard. This toteboard lists the firms that obtained the most US trademark registrations in 2018.
You can see the other 2018 toteboards here.
e-filing at WIPO — back to normal
For the past three weeks the situation for e-filing at WIPO has been that the local time to e-file so as to get a same-day filing date in Switzerland has been different from usual. But today the people in Switzerland have turned their clocks forward. So things are back to normal.
For example if you are in the Mountain time zone, once again as of today you will be counting toward 4PM local time to get a same-day filing date in Switzerland. (For the past three weeks the answer was 5PM.)
Who doesn’t know the difference between a patent and a trademark? USA Today, that’s who.

Today’s USA Today newspaper roasts a celebrity for getting a patent denied due to poor punctuation. The article is embarrassingly poorly written. Continue reading “Who doesn’t know the difference between a patent and a trademark? USA Today, that’s who.”
Ninth Annual E-Trademarks Listserv Reception Tuesday, May 21, 2019 in Boston
Will you be in Boston at the time of the INTA meeting? I already told you to save the date (February 17, 2019 blog post) for the E-Trademarks reception. Now the venue and time of day are also set.
The Ninth Annual E-Trademarks listserv reception will take place on Tuesday, Mary 21, 2019. This will be at The Black Rose (restaurant web site). The event will run from 6PM to 9PM.
05/21/2019 06:00 PM
05/21/2019 09:00 PM
America/New_York
60
e-Trademarks listserv reception
for members of the listserv and their guests
The Black Rose, 160 State Street, Boston, MA 02109
This reception is for members of the E-Trademarks listserv, and for guests of members of the listserv.
Please RSVP here.

We are renting out the entire second story of the restaurant (photo at right). Here is the location of the event.
There is one other important event during this time that you need to know about: Meet the Bloggers XV.
Canada joins Madrid Protocol
Canada has joined the Madrid Protocol. The Protocol will enter into force for Canada on June 17, 2019. Continue reading “Canada joins Madrid Protocol”
Broken links in “get your numbers in for the toteboards”
Hello readers. After comments from several people I went to look closely at my four recent posts:
- Get your numbers in for the 2018 US plant patent toteboard
- Get your numbers in for the 2018 US design patent toteboard
- Get your numbers in for the 2018 US utility patent toteboard
- Get your numbers in for the 2018 US trademark registration toteboard
Each blog article contains four important links for you to click on:
- a link to the questionnaire where you can enter your numbers for the particular category in that particular blog post, and
- crosslinks to the other three blog posts.
In each case the questionnaire link works fine so far as I am aware. But until today, each place where there was a crosslink to one of the other three blog posts, the crosslink was no good. It asked for a user ID and password instead of taking you to the desired page.
Thanks to alert readers, I have hopefully corrected the crosslinks.
Hopefully everybody will get their numbers in soon.