Will you be in San Diego at the time of the INTA annual meeting? If so, there are two receptions that you won’t want to miss.
Continue reading “The two receptions that you need to attend in San Diego in May”
USPTO closed today (Thursday)
Yes it’s another snow day at the Patent Office.
USPTO will be closed on Tuesday, February 17
The weather reports for the Washington area call for “six to ten inches of snow” between now and noon on Tuesday. So the USPTO will be formally closed on Tuesday, February 17. This means that if you needed to file something on the 17th to satisfy some USPTO due date, it will be timely if filed on Wednesday the 18th.
Continue reading “USPTO will be closed on Tuesday, February 17”
USPTO closed Monday February 16
Just a reminder that the USPTO will be closed on Monday, February 16. This is Washington’s Birthday* which is a federal holiday.
Anything that you might need to do by February 16 to satisfy some USPTO due date may be postponed until Tuesday, February 17 and will still be timely.
USPTO trademark fee reduction options now available
The USPTO fee reduction options that I blogged about here (December 17, 2014) and here (May 10, 2014) went into effect over the weekend. I invite you to start with the December 17 article if you are not already familiar with this development.
Clever associate’s trademark advocacy secret weapon revealed
It’s a few months ago that I looked at one of our trademark cases — a Madrid Protocol case that had come in from foreign counsel on behalf of a foreign applicant — and pronounced to anyone who would listen that the case was never going to be approved for publication. I was convinced that the Examining Attorney’s grounds for refusal were impossible to overcome. I figured it was only a matter of time before it would go abandoned. I figured the sole remaining necessary lawyering skill would be communicating a gentle let-down to foreign counsel — an exercise in expectations management.
One of my associates was handling the case. The other day I was astonished to learn that my associate had completely overcome the refusal. I asked her how she accomplished this seemingly impossible result. She smiled and explained what had happened.
Continue reading “Clever associate’s trademark advocacy secret weapon revealed”
Most-read postings in “Ant-like Persistence” for 2014
The arrival of a new year prompts every blogger to look back to see which postings in the previous year reached a lot of eyeballs.
Well, by far the most-read posting for all of 2014 in Ant-like Persistence was “A little-known USPTO initiative to reduce the backlog“. This posting, dating from early April of 2014, might be of great interest to patent practitioners who missed the original posting.
In second place was “USPTO is closed today, Monday, March 17“. This was the posting that told readers that it was a snow day in Washington. It meant that anything that needed to be filed in the USPTO on Monday March 17 could be postponed until Tuesday March 18 and still be timely.
The people who subscribe to this blog are likely to hear of such USPTO closings in the future. So if you have not already done so, subscribe to the blog. And if you have a friend or colleague who would like to hear about it when the USPTO has a snow day, encourage them to subscribe to the blog.
The importance of warning clients about unscrupulous fee requests
We all need to redouble our efforts to warn clients about unscrupulous fee requests. Four recent examples reminded me how insidious these fee requests can be. The first one asks me to wire $2322.30 to a bank in Slovakia. The second one asks me to wire $2738 to a bank in Czech Republic. The third one asks me to wire $2548.25 (where do they get these amounts?) to a bank in Slovakia. And the fourth asks me to wire $2327 to a bank in Czech Republic.
Continue reading “The importance of warning clients about unscrupulous fee requests”
USPTO will be closed Friday, December 26
The USPTO will be closed Friday, December 26, 2014. Any action or fee due on Friday, December 26, 2014, would be considered timely if filed on the next succeeding business day, specifically, Monday, December 29, 2014. You can see this on the USPTO web site here and here.
A big thank you goes to Bryan Wheelock and Matthew Hintz who provided the citations to the items on the USPTO web site.
Yet another nice person (Scott Barrett) points out that apparently this closure was announced by the White House on December 5, 2014.
Registering a sound mark
USPTO’s grant this week of a trademark registration for Ant-like Persistence reminds me of the trademark registration which we received a couple of years ago for a sound mark. Long-time members of the E-Trademarks listserv will recall this grant which happened about four years ago. We use this sound mark when we do webinars and audiovisual recordings.