Category: Trademarks

Will you be in Barcelona this May at the time of the annual meeting of the International Trademark Association?  If so, maybe you would like to rub elbows with the savvy and alert people who belong to the E-Trademarks Listserv.  Maybe you would like to attend the Seventh Annual E-Trademarks Listserv reception.  To attend the reception you will need to have one of these spiffy ribbons (see at right) attached to your meeting badge.  To receive one of these spiffy ribbons, just scan the QR code in the ribbon.  Or you can click here.

In the previous blog article I described the “balaclava problem” and gave an example of a real-life trademark application presenting this problem.  In that blog article I described one of the two ways that the USPTO is trying to attack the “balaclava problem”.  In this blog article I describe a second way that the USPTO is trying to attack this problem.

Continue reading “USPTO tackling the “balaclava problem” (part 2)”

Trademark filers are familiar with the “balaclava problem”.  When I say the “balaclava problem” I mean the many US trademark registrations in which the listing of identified goods or services in a particular trademark class is a listing of all possible goods or services in that class.  The USPTO has launched two recent initiatives which are intended to try to fight the “balaclava problem”.  This blog article discusses one of the initiatives and the next blog article discusses the second of the initiatives.

Let’s first give a real-life illustration of the “balaclava problem”.  As an example consider the 721 items of goods in class 25 (clothing) for this application, which is presently pending before the USPTO: Continue reading “USPTO tackling the “balaclava problem” (part 1)”

I’ve received my first status monitoring results from USPTO’s new TAD (Trademark Application Docket) system.  The system worked, so far as I can tell.  I’ll describe how it went. Continue reading “First results from USPTO’s Trademark Application Docket system”

The USPTO has quietly released a new way to monitor the trademark Official Gazette.  (Note that this is not at all the same thing as the trademark application monitoring system that I discussed in the previous blog article!  This blog article is talking about a system for monitoring the Official Gazette, and the previous blog article is talking about a system for monitoring TSDR.)

Continue reading “A new way to monitor the trademark Official Gazette”

The USPTO has quietly rolled out a new system that permits users to monitor the status of trademark filings.  The USPTO’s new system has a few features in common with Feathers!, the well-known software for monitoring US trademark filings.  I hope trademark practitioners will give the USPTO’s new system a try and post comments below, to report their experience.

Continue reading “A new way to monitor US trademark filings”

It’s that time of year again.  A year ago we published the 2015 US Trademark Registration Tote Board.  Now it’s time to get the numbers in for the 2016 US Trademark Registration Tote Board.

The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients obtain US trademark registrations in 2016.  The toteboard seeks to list US trademark registrations granted in 2016.    The closing date for the questionnaire  will be January 20, 2017.

To learn more and to report your numbers, please click here.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (the office formerly known as OHIM) has released a fascinating new image searching system for trademarks. You can upload an image and the system will look for similar images, based upon some sort of AI (artificial intelligence) algorithm.  I decided to try it out.  I uploaded the familiar image that you see at right.  Here is a small portion of what the system found:

Continue reading “Improved image searching for trademarks”