Category: Trademarks

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Still no geographically diverse USPTO backup server for e-filing!

Well today every USPTO e-commerce system has crashed.  Users are unable to reach EFS-Web (patent filing) or PAIR or patent assignments on the web.  EPAS is broken.  The system for paying maintenance fees is broken.

Oh and EFS-Web Contingency, the “backup” patent e-filing system that is “guaranteed” to be working even if the main EFS-Web system is broken, is broken.

On the trademark side, TEAS and TESS are both broken.  TSDR is down.  TTABVue is down.

Oddly the main USPTO web site is not broken.  But then the main USPTO web site does not actually do anything for USPTO customers.  To actually get anything done one must migrate away from the main USPTO web site to one of the other e-commerce sites.

It is clear that even now there is some Single Point of Failure that is able to knock out both the main EFS-Web server and the backup EFS-Web server.  An alert twelve-year old, hearing about such a problem, would have no trouble figuring out that the correct protective step would be to move one of the two servers to some geographically diverse location.  No single errant backhoe would rip up both fiber optical cable feeds at the two locations.  No power line downed because of ice would shut down both locations.

Which brings me to the Big Problem.  The Big Problem, as I have blogged about again and again, is that USPTO continues to fail to place its backup patent e-filing system in a geographically diverse location such as one of the other Patent Offices.

Oh and of course USPTO’s answer would be “you can always use 37 CFR 1.10” meaning “you can go to the Post Office”.  Except then you would get a slap in the face, as our firm did, with a notice of having to pay a $400 penalty for failing to e-file.

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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.