Many readers of this blog are frequent users of the Madrid Protocol system. Some probably qualify as “power users” of the Madrid Protocol system. What some might not be aware of, however, is that WIPO provides what is called its Guide to the Madrid System. You can see the book’s front cover at right. This is a 260-page book, and the big news is that this book just got re-released today in its 2022 version. Continue reading “Just released — a new version of “Guide to the Madrid System””
Nice people at WIPO received our poster
It will be recalled that the Tenth e-Trademarks Listserv Reception took place on Tuesday, May 3, 2022 (blog article with pix) and that we knew ahead of time that some nice people from WIPO (from the Madrid Protocol part of WIPO) were planning to attend.
Never wanting to miss a chance to pass along “asks” to an intellectual property office, the members of the listserv collected a bunch of “asks”. We prepared a big poster listing the “asks” and we put it on an easel so that people attending the listserv could review the “asks” and could sign the poster if they were comfortable doing so. You can read about the poster and you can see a big photo of it, and a list of the “asks”, here. At the end of the evening, we pulled the poster off from its corrugated cardboard backing and we folded it up and stuck it in an envelope and mailed it to the nice WIPO people.
I am delighted to report that today an email message came in from David Muls (photo at right), who is one of the high-up people at WIPO in charge of Madrid Protocol. It is he who received the postal service envelope at WIPO headquarters, with the folded-up signed poster inside. He sent us an email saying:
The poster was well received!!!!! 😀 We are impressed by the many signatures!!!
He provided a photo of the unfolded poster as it arrived in Geneva, and you can see it here at right. (I think in this particular photo he was mostly trying to capture the “asks” but I think all of the signatures came through as well on the physical poster.)
By the way I find myself from time to time writing phrases such as “nice people at WIPO” and I keep wondering if maybe that is actually redundancy in such a phrase. Or inherency or something.
Second round of electronic US trademark registration certificates gets issued
(Corrected with two corrections prompted by alert reader Ken Boone. The starting number was 6741505, not 6741504. Thus the count of issued registrations was 7477, not 7478. Thank you, Ken.)
Today, May 31, 2022, a second round of US trademarks got registered under the new “electronic certificate” program.
The lowest US trademark registration number handed out today was 6741505. The highest US trademark registration number handed out today was 6748981. So it looks like the Trademark Office issued 7477 US trademark registrations today. That number is roughly consistent with the numbers from a few weeks ago, before the big SNAFU on May 10, 2022.
The electronic registration certificates all seem to be present in TSDR right now at 5:41 AM Eastern Time.
The certificate for the lowest registration number got cryptographically signed on May 20, 2022 at 4:32 AM. The certificate for the highest registration number got cryptographically signed on May 27, 2022 at 8:02 AM.
One hundred eleven trademark applicants and practitioners ask Commissioner Gooder to stop demanding to know where trademark applicants sleep at night
(Updated with the US Postal Service delivery.)
Yes, the title says it all. One hundred eleven trademark applicants and practitioners have signed a letter asking Commissioner for Trademarks David S. Gooder to stop demanding to know where trademark applicants sleep at night. You can see the letter here. A courtesy copy of the letter has been emailed to Commissioner Gooder today. The US Postal Service delivered the physical letter on May 31, 2022 at 7:31 AM as you can see here.
Please consider signing a letter to Commissioner for Trademarks about “where you sleep at night”
(Update: the letter has been sent. See blog article.)
Hello, dear readers. This is urgent.
Yesterday, the Trademark Office published 20837 supposedly private email addresses of trademark applicants, even though two years ago it promised the Trademark Public Advisory Committee it would protect those email addresses from public view (blog article).
If the Trademark Office is going to slip up and reveal twenty thousand supposedly private applicant email addresses, then it is only a matter of time before the Trademark Office slips up and reveals a hundred thousand addresses where trademark applicants sleep at night.
And a few of them will be people who absolutely did not want the world to know where they sleep at night, and for very good reasons, and it will be the kind of thing that we will all feel sick to our stomachs about. That’s if we don’t do something about it.
So here it is, a letter for review and possible signature. I want it to land on Commissioner Gooder’s desk right away, while he is still stinging from the realization yesterday that his office published the twenty thousand supposedly private email addresses. I have in mind closing this letter for signature two days from now (Friday) at close of business. So let’s not put this off. Let’s review the letter today and if you are going to sign it, please sign it today. And if you know of somebody else that you think ought to know about this letter, please bring this to their attention today.
To see the letter, and for possible signature, click here.
Trademark Office breaks its promise to keep applicant email address secret
Today, May 24, 2022, the Commissioner for Trademarks published my client’s secret email address to the world. It is not easy to find polite language to describe how I am feeling right now. This is a part of the Trademark Office’s ham-fisted migration from paper registration certificates to electronic registration certificates. I am very disappointed. Continue reading “Trademark Office breaks its promise to keep applicant email address secret”
Now the 20838 electronic registration certificates are actually there
Today was the big day for the Trademark Office to make up for lost time. It issued 6001 paper registrations on May 10, then memory-holed them. Then there were around 7000 paper registrations that ought to have been issued on May 17, and that did not happen. Finally today the Trademark Office issued 20838 US trademark registrations. That was about seven hours ago. The registration numbers that got handed out on May 10 were in the range from 6720667 to 6726667. Those were supposed to become paper registration certificates but that never actually happened. (They got memory-holed.) Those registration numbers got handed out again today. In addition, another 14838 registration numbers got handed out today, which were the make-ups from May 17 as well as the registrations that would normally have gotten issued today. The highest registration number that got handed out today is 6741504.
But what did not happen was the actual electronic trademark registration certificates.
Just now, at around 7 AM Eastern Time, the Trademark Office has uploaded the actual electronic trademark registration certificates to TSDR. So now it is actually possible for these 20838 customers of the USPTO to download the actual electronic trademark registration certificates.
You can click here to see the lowest-numbered US trademark registration certificate that the Trademark Office registered today (6720667). You can click here to see the highest-numbered US trademark registration certificate that the Trademark Office registered today (6741504).
It is interesting to note that they are all digitally signed on May 19, 2022 (five days ago) or May 20, 2022 (four days ago). So the certificates were actually created four or five days ago.
Back from the memory hole
Two hours ago, the 6001 documents dated May 11, 2022 that served the purpose of memory-holing the Trademark Office’s registration activities of May 10, 2022 (seen at right) had themselves gone down the memory hole (blog article).
Now they are back.
A big registration day at the Trademark Office
The USPTO registered about three times as many trademarks today as it would on a usual Tuesday, as may be seen at right. This is a consequence of the “down the memory hole” activity of the Trademark Office on May 10, 2022 (blog article and blog article and blog article). Continue reading “A big registration day at the Trademark Office”
Trademark Office memory hole activity explained
(Updated, see below, to report events at the Trademark Office on May 24, 2022. Yes I correctly predicted several aspects of what eventually did happen on May 24, 2022, as seen in the updates below.)
Well, folks, the USPTO has sort of vaguely and indirectly half-answered what happened last week with the 6001 US trademark registration numbers that were communicated to applicants and then got sent down the memory hole (blog article and blog article). The explanation, such as it is, is that there was “a recent paper vendor disruption”. Continue reading “Trademark Office memory hole activity explained”