Bluesky: @oppedahl.com
USPTO did a good thing recently.
About a year and a half ago, I pointed out (see blog post) that the USPTO was publishing the IP addresses of trademark customers. This was a Very Bad Thing. I am delighted to be able to report that USPTO has taken corrective action.
Continue reading “USPTO stops publishing IP addresses of trademark customers”
Will you be in Orlando at the time of the 2016 INTA annual meeting? If so, you might want to attend the twelfth annual Meet the Bloggers. This is your opportunity meet the writers of some of the most widely read intellectual property and trademark related blogs. To find out more, go to https://www.meet-the-bloggers.com/.
It’s been many years since I first tried to nudge the USPTO in the direction of providing up-to-date web security for its customers. Up-to-date web security includes at least three measures:
I’m not the only one trying to nudge the USPTO in the right direction. No less an authority than the White House has also tried to nudge the USPTO in this direction, by means of presidential executive order:
A White House CIO web page explains to US government agencies how to implement HTTPS on their web sites. The web page says:
Federal websites that do not convert to HTTPS will not keep pace with privacy and security practices used by commercial organizations, and with current and upcoming Internet standards. This leaves Americans vulnerable to known threats, and may reduce their confidence in their government.
In August of 2014 I urged the USPTO to implement HTTPS on its servers (“USPTO needs to implement SSL and PFS on all servers“). I pointed out that TESS, TEAS, EPAS, ETAS, AOTW, PATFT, and TSDR all lacked HTTPS and PFS. I pointed out that EPO and WIPO have PFS on their servers that have HTTPS.
What progress has USPTO made since August of 2014 when I nudged the USPTO? What progress has USPTO made since June of 2015 when the President nudged the USPTO? Continue reading “USPTO continues to fail to provide up-to-date web security”
If you are an active trademark practitioner before the USPTO, the E-Trademarks listserv is a good place to hang out. Here is a question that a listserv member posted to the discussion group:
Continue reading “How long a trademark Request to Divide takes?”
Last summer I blogged here and here about Donald Trump’s first US trademark application for “Make America Great Again”. That one registered in July of 2015 (US trademark registration number 4773272).
Now Mr. Trump has filed three more trademark applications for the same mark:
From 2005 to 2014, Intellectual Property Today magazine served the IP community by providing toteboards ranking US patent and trademark firms according to the number of patents and trademarks obtained for clients each year.
The Ant-Like Persistence blog now carries on this tradition. Here are the 2015 US toteboards. You can see:
You can also see previous US Design Patent Toteboards for 2014, 2013, and 2012.
These toteboards rely upon reported numbers from patent and trademark firms. Unfortunately, not all patent and trademark firms reported their numbers, which doubtless left some omissions in the rankings. For the utility and design patent toteboards, we were able to carry out searches on a USPTO database to remedy some of the omissions. As for US trademark registrations, however, it is not easy to carry out searches by trademark firm. So there are probably more omissions in that toteboard.
Hopefully by next year most patent and trademark firms will be aware of these toteboards and will report their numbers.
If your firm did not respond and is not listed in these 2015 toteboards, feel free to post a comment below with your firm’s totals for 2015 and, if you like, the approximate ranking that you think would have resulted for your firm.
Horror vacui. At the beginning of each calendar year, we are all accustomed to adding up our US utility patent totals and US trademark totals, and sending them to Intellectual Property Today magazine so that they may be listed in the IP Today tote boards. But as far as I can tell, IP Today is out of business.
As you know, for two years now this blog has sponsored a US design patent tote board. The apparent demise of IP Today has prompted me to set up successor tote boards for US utility patents and US trademark registrations.
If you would like your firm to be listed in the 2015 US design patent tote board, please act quickly because I plan to close responses for that tote board at the end of the day on February 1, 2016.
If you would like your firm to be listed in the 2015 US utility patent tote board, please respond here by February 15, 2016.
If you would like your firm to be listed in the 2015 US trademark registration tote board, please respond here by February 15, 2016.
These tote boards won’t serve their readers well unless nearly everybody gets listed. So please forward this blog post to everybody you know who might like to be listed and who might not be aware of this opportunity.
Today, Monday, January 25, 2016 was a snow day at the USPTO.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, January 26 will also be a snow day at the USPTO.
This means that any paper or response that needed to be filed at the USPTO on Monday, January 25 or Tuesday, January 26 will be timely if it is filed on Wednesday, January 27.
Tomorrow (Monday, January 25) will be a snow day at the USPTO.
Any paper that would have been due on Monday will be timely if filed on Tuesday.
US practitioners have burned into their memory the débacle of December 22-27, 2015 when all of USPTO’s e-filing systems were broken. For litigation purposes there will surely be cases where it will matter a lot whether a filing that got done on December 28, 2015 was or was not timely. And any US practitioner will have no trouble remembering this very disruptive time.
But ten years from now in litigation, how will it be recalled that, for example, Monday, March 17, 2014 was a snow day at the USPTO? (Maybe the litigants will think to check my blog article about that snow day.)
I am delighted to be able to report that for five years now, WIPO has been quietly maintaining a searchable historical database on exactly this topic. You can go there and click on “US” and then click on “2014” and right there it lists March 17, 2014 as a day that the USPTO was closed.
This valuable resource from WIPO is the sort of database that you hope you will never need, but if you need it, it can be a lifesaver.