Category: Trademarks

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USPTO continues to fail to provide up-to-date web security

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:

  • HTTPS connections for all e-commerce web sites
  • PFS (perfect forward secrecy) for all HTTPS web sites
  • DNSSEC (Domain Name System security) for all domain names

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:

  • In 2008, the White House directed all US government agencies (including the USPTO) to implement DNSSEC on all of their domain names (memorandum M-08-233).
  • In 2015, the White House directed all US government agencies (including the USPTO) to implement HTTPS on all of their web sites (memorandum M-15-13).

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”

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How long a trademark Request to Divide takes?

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:

Does anybody have an idea of how long it takes to process a request to divide?  That last one I filed took about 2 days, but that was some time ago.  I am currently waiting on one I filed over three weeks ago.  Does anybody know the standard timeline these days?
How long do you suppose it takes for the Trademark Office to act upon a Request to Divide?

Continue reading “How long a trademark Request to Divide takes?”

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Trump files three more trademark applications for “Make America Great Again”

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:

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2015 Toteboards Published

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.

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Get listed in the 2015 US Utility Patent and Trademark Tote Boards!

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.

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Tuesday will also be a snow day at the USPTO

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.

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Years later in litigation, who can recall when an Office was closed?

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.

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For inbound foreign work, who’s the client?

A thoughtful reader (I’ll call him “WW”) asks:

I have an ethics-related question that should be relevant to most U.S. patent practitioners, though I haven’t been able to find any writings about it online.

The issue is, “who is the client”, for foreign-originated patent filings in the US?

The client could possibly be either the foreign originating firm, or it could be their own ultimate client, or possibly both.

To the extent we have a choice (for example, by specifying in an engagement letter signed by all parties), which would be better? I can see benefits and detriments to either choice.

I’ll offer one or two thoughts about this, and then I’d like to invite readers to please post comments with their own points of view about all of this. Continue reading “For inbound foreign work, who’s the client?”

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USPTO e-commerce systems continue to stumble

USPTO online systems continue to stumble or crash.  Much of this, I expect, is a consequence of cobbled-together temporary fixes to the massive UPS failures that happened on December 22.  Here’s a brief recap of today’s situation:

  • Newly filed patent applications and entries into the US national phase that were filed on January 5 seem to have been lost.  USPTO is trying to recover them but after more than a week they have not been recovered.  See further comments on this “January 5 problem” in a later blog post.
  • EFS-Web petitions that are supposed to be auto-granted are all broken.  We have a case that is scheduled to issue next Tuesday and we need to get it withdrawn from issue.  The auto-granting petition in EFS-Web keeps freezing and crashing.  EBC has acknowledged this as a known problem.  Hopefully USPTO will get this system repaired before next Tuesday.
  • Document display within TSDR has been on-again-off-again for the past couple of days.  As of right this moment it is on again.
  • ETAS sometimes crashes when you try to pay the recordation fee.  (EPAS does not have this problem because of course patent recordations are free of charge!)  There is a complicated workaround that involves saving the submission and taking off your shoes and putting them back on again.  (Just kidding.)
  • Visibility of recently filed documents in IFW is nonexistent.  Newly filed documents are supposed to be visible within one hour.  We are pretty consistently seeing delays of 18 hours or more before a document is visible in IFW.  This is a Big Problem.
  • EFS-Web ack receipts and fee payment pages are flaky.  This happened to many cases filed December 22 and December 27.  Even now as of January 14, USPTO has not yet provided accurate ack receipts and fee payment pages.  This is happening again now on new EFS-Web filings as of January 13.  The short-term survival steps for customers include checking the “fees” tab in PAIR and looking up the transaction in Financial Profile.