Category: Trademarks

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A tip of the hat to the TTABlog

Yesterday I was delighted to see that John L. Welch had given a shout-out onClipboard02 his very popular TTABlog to an article in my Ant-like Persistence blog.  This was in his TTABlog Flotsam and Jetsam, Issue No. 15.  If you’ve not already done so, you should subscribe to the TTABlog.  John was doing blogging before it was trendy, for over a decade now, and his blog has probably at least ten times as many followers as mine has.  So it’s very nice and very gracious for him to have linked to my blog.  I estimate that his link brought at least a hundred new viewers to my blog.

On the subject of intellectual property blogs, there are other important blogs that you should subscribe to.  These include the many sponsors of Meet the Bloggers, a moveable feast that has turned up at INTA meetings since the San Diego meeting in 2005.  John has sponsored Meet the Bloggers many times, as have:

I’d guess there will likely be an eleventh annual Meet the Bloggers reception at the INTA meeting in San Diego in 2015.

And of course if you have not already done so, you should subscribe to Dennis Crouch’s Patently-O Blog.

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The ® symbol

The alert reader will have already noticed today’s change to the banner above.  The banner now contains the ® symbol next to the words “Ant-like Persistence”.  The banner also contains a photograph (taken by yours truly) that shows some of the mountains nearby to our office in Summit County, Colorado.

Continue reading “The ® symbol”

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USPTO credit card limit to be cut back still further

We get a lot of frequent flyer miles every year paying fees to the USPTO and WIPO by credit card.  The miles that we get are chicken feed compared with the frequent flyer miles that the really big filers — the Oblons and Sughrues of the world — may receive in this way.

Paying a fee by credit card offers the further benefit that we can “float” the cost for a month, and hopefully the client’s payment of its bill will happen promptly enough that we can pay the credit card bill in full using the money that just came in from the client.

Having said this, we note that the USPTO keeps tinkering with its credit-card payment system in ways that make it harder and harder to pay by credit card.  Just today USPTO announced another change.

Continue reading “USPTO credit card limit to be cut back still further”

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New USPTO “series code” for Hague Agreement cases

Those whose practice includes “inbound” Madrid Protocol trademark applications are accustomed to the series code “79”.  When you see a USPTO application number that starts with “79” you know that it is a trademark application number and that it came to the USPTO from the International Bureau of WIPO.  Someone who filed a Madrid Protocol trademark application (in a place other than the USPTO) must have designated the US.

Now the USPTO has picked the series code that it will use for Hague Agreement applications.

Continue reading “New USPTO “series code” for Hague Agreement cases”

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Canada takes a step toward Hague and PLT

The Canadian parliament has taken up a bill which, if enacted, would permit Canada to join the Hague Agreement (one-stop filing of applications for protection of industrial designs) and the Patent Law Treaty.

There has also been some progress in Canada toward eventually joining the Madrid Protocol (one-stop filing of applications for protection of trademarks).

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Dontcha just hate “see attached letter”?

There are a lot of annoying things about an email that says “see attached letter”.  I’ll basically just be ranting in this posting.  Feel free to skip it.

I should emphasize first that if somebody is paying my firm to do work, I will cheerfully receive any and all “attached letters” that they wish to send.  The non-US patent firm that has sent me dozens of patent applications to be filed in the US can send any email in whatever way they want to sent it.

What I am talking about is the non-US intellectual property firms, and the service providers (annuity services for example) that are receiving money from my firm.  These are the people I am complaining about when I say I am annoyed by an email that says “see attached letter”.

Why am I annoyed by this?

Continue reading “Dontcha just hate “see attached letter”?”

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Let’s get those TEAS forms e-signed today

As a reminder, any TEAS form that needs e-signing will get thrown away at the USPTO tonight.  USPTO has scheduled a server reboot for tomorrow (Saturday the 23rd) in which all of the outstanding TEAS forms will get thrown away.

So the smart thing to do today is to chase after your clients and get your outstanding TEAS forms e-signed today.  (And you need to get the forms e-filed right away after they have been e-signed.)  Otherwise if the form remains unsigned and unfiled by the end of the day, you will have to start over again on Monday.

I guess the other smart thing to do today, if you have not already done so, is to subscribe to this blog! ☺  Just go to the upper-right corner where it says “Subscribe to blog via email”.

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US Trademark Office needs to stop publishing IP addresses linked to email addresses

(Followup — USPTO did the right thing and stopped publishing IP addresses.  See this blog post.)

Those who read the previous posting, about the need for USPTO to implement SSL and PFS on all of its outward-facing e-commerce systems, will have heard of the suspicion that a company is eavesdropping on TESS sessions and then uses the results of the eavesdropping in emailed sales pitches.  The alert reader will wonder how it is that such an eavesdropper would be able to figure out what email address to use to reach someone at an otherwise seemingly random IP address.  The answer is that the US Trademark Office needs to stop publishing IP addresses linked to email addresses.

Continue reading “US Trademark Office needs to stop publishing IP addresses linked to email addresses”