Category: Trademarks

Yes, folks, Saturday, December 3, 2022 will be the day.  Starting December 3, you will only get three months to respond to a USPTO trademark Office Action instead of the usual six months.  This article hopefully answers some of your questions about this change.  Continue reading “December 3 will be the day — three months for trademark responses to Office actions”

(Update:  The oral argument took place on December 7, 2023 and you can see the transcript here.)

(Update:  the appellee’s brief has been filed – blog article.)

(Update:  the appellant’s reply brief has been filed – blog article.)

Readers will recall that a few days ago I wrote:

This would be a perfect time for amici to file amicus briefs.

An amicus brief has now been filed in the case about the Trademark Office demanding to know where the trademark applicant sleeps at night (blog article).  You can see the amicus brief here.

(update:  an amicus brief has been filed.)

(update:  the appellee’s brief has been filed.)

(update:  the appellant’s reply brief has been filed.)

Many readers are aware of the keen obsession that the Trademark Office at the USPTO has in knowing where trademark applicants sleep at night.  Readers who are familiar with the statutes and rules and accumulated court cases relating to the right and wrong ways to do “rulemaking” may also have gone to the trouble of looking at the steps that the Trademark Office followed in promulgating its rules that, since a couple of years ago, have required applicants to reveal to the Trademark Office where they sleep at night.  But perhaps not so many readers are aware that right now there is pending in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit a case that asks the Court to consider striking down those rules.

There is now an important development in that Court of Appeals case.  Continue reading “The “where you sleep at night” Federal Circuit appeal – first brief”

Yesterday (blog article) I reported half a dozen US trademark applications that had been filed as much as 2½ years ago and still did not have an Examining Attorney.   Here are five more US trademark applications that were filed a long time ago and still do not have an Examining Attorney:

Application Number	Filing Date
90824061	12 July 2021
90833853	16 July 2021
90833862	16 July 2021
90833857	16 July 2021
90849560	26 July 2021

Continue reading “More US trademark applications that lack an Examining Attorney”

As I explain in this blog article,  “presentation copies” from the USPTO are not very good from a “suitability for framing” point of view.  But what is much worse is that “presentation copies” are going to cause harm to the trademark community.  The Trademark Office’s recent spotlight on “presentation copies”, and indeed the Trademark Office’s recent program of giving them away for free, will very predictably embolden some trademark owners in overstating the breadth of their trademark rights.  The Trademark Office will be aiding and abetting the intimidation of parties who are not actually doing anything wrong but who are the target of overly broad cease-and-desist letters.  Continue reading “Why a “presentation copy” from the USPTO is no good”

(July 11, 2022.  Updated to provide a TSDR link for each application number.  Still none of the applications has been given to an Examining Attorney.)

The USPTO reports a pendency of around six to seven months for newly filed US trademark applications.  But there are quite a few trademark applications that were filed a lot longer ago than that, that still do not have an Examining Attorney.  Here are some examples:

Application Number	Filing date
88704832	November 25, 2019
88729476	December 17, 2019
88729463	December 17, 2019
88729452	December 17, 2019
88729389	December 16, 2019
88794834	February 12, 2020

As you will see, the oldest one on this list was filed more than 2½ years ago and still does not have an Examining Attorney.   I hope and trust that some reader of this blog article who works in the Trademark Office will pass along these six application numbers to whoever it is that is responsible for assigning Examining Attorneys to trademark applications.

It strikes me that this is the sort of thing that computers are supposed to be good at.  How can it possibly be that the Trademark Office does not already have some automated process that runs, say, once a month, and generates a report like this?  Such a report would permit the appropriate Trademark Office person to take corrective action (see 37 C.F.R. § 2.23(d) and TMEP § 108.03) by assigning an Examining Attorney.