Category: Trademarks

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Will the USPTO be closed this Thursday?

Every December there is a sort of game of chicken, with federal employees (and customers of the USPTO) wondering until the last minute whether the President will sign an executive order giving federal employees an extra day off from work around Christmas.  This affects customers of the USPTO because they need to know whether patent applications and responses can be postponed until the next working day.

Slightly over half of the time over the last twenty years or so, what has happened in December is that the President signs such an order.  There has never been more than two or three weeks’ advance notice, and sometimes the Presidential order has been signed just a few days before the would-be holiday.

In 2014 Christmas fell on a Thursday (and thus was a federal holiday), and on December 5 of that year the President signed an order giving everybody an extra day off on Friday the 26th.  This meant that any patent application or response that would normally be due on the 25th or 26th or 27th or 28th could be postponed until the 29th.

In 2013 Christmas fell on a Wednesday and the president did not give any extra time off.

So how will it be this Christmas season?  Will federal employees get the day off on Thursday the 24th?  Will customers of the USPTO be able to put off filings that would have been due on the 24th until Monday the 28th? Continue reading “Will the USPTO be closed this Thursday?”

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Why it costs money to record a trademark assignment at USPTO?

Used to be you had to pay a $40 fee to record an assignment at the USPTO.  Adding a second property to the recordation cost $40 if you were recording a patent assignment but cost $25 if you were recording a trademark assignment.

I never understood why that second or third property cost one price for trademarks and a different price for patents.

Almost two years ago the USPTO cut the fee for recording a patent assignment to zero.  This was welcome news.  When that price cut happened, I recall wondering why this fee did not drop to zero for trademark assignments.

Today I got my chance.  I am the vice-chair of AIPLA’s Patent Cooperation Treaty Issues committee, so I was present at a meeting of committee chairs, vice-chairs, and board members.  Mary Boney Denison, the Commissioner for Trademarks, was a special guest.  When she finished her prepared remarks, she asked if anybody had any questions.  So I raised my hand and asked why it is that we have to pay money to record a trademark assignment when we don’t need to pay money to record a patent assignment. Continue reading “Why it costs money to record a trademark assignment at USPTO?”

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Most popular page on OPLF’s web site?

There are several hundred pages on the web site of Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC at https://www.oppedahl.com/.  For the first time in some months I clicked around a bit in our visitor statistics, and found that one particular page on our law firm web site is ten times more popular than any other page on our law firm web site.  (I am talking about www.oppedahl.com here, not blog.oppedahl.com.) Continue reading “Most popular page on OPLF’s web site?”

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I folded on the specimen rejection

olf-specimenReaders will recall my posting on July 21 in which I complained about the USPTO’s post-registration division bouncing a specimen in the renewal of my own trademark registration.  I was trying to do an 8-and-15 for my mark “OPLF”.  The services were all drawn from the ID Manual, and it seemed to me that the words “Patent Attorney” on the card made clear that I was providing patent attorney services.  But that’s not how post-reg saw it.  The way they saw it, the business card supposedly failed to “reference” the services.  They bounced the specimen. Continue reading “I folded on the specimen rejection”

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Maybe you can’t say “Make America Great Again”?

(Trump files three more trademark applications:  followup blog post here.)

Today the USPTO granted US trademark registration number 4,773,272 to Donald Trump.  Yes, that Donald Trump.  You can see the registration certificate here.  (I blogged about the pending trademark application here.)  Oh to be a fly upon the wall, to hear whether the other presidential candidates are now being advised by their trademark counsel that from now until the November 2016 elections are over, they must avoid uttering those four words in sequence.

 

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IP torts and natural persons as defendants

A longstanding member of the E-trademarks listserv offered up an all-too-familiar fact pattern:

Scenario:  In-house counsel sends a cease-and-desist letter asserting non-existent trademark rights.  Assume the letter is sent in bad faith and constitutes unfair competition.
Question:  Since unfair competition is a tort and in-house counsel is acting within the scope of employment, I would assume this person is jointly and severally liable with the employer.  Thoughts?  Case law?

So can you go after the person who signed the letter? Continue reading “IP torts and natural persons as defendants”