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USPTO is closed today – not?

See the Office of Personnel Management announcement which says:

FEDERAL OFFICES in the Washington, DC area are CLOSED. Emergency and telework-ready employees required to work must follow their agency’s policies, including written telework agreements.

I wrote:

The USPTO is closed today, Friday, March 2, 2018.

Normally at this time of year such a closure would be due to a dusting of snow.  But the reason for the closure is “high wind”.

Oh, and at the risk of stating the obvious, this means that any response or action that would have been due today will be timely if filed by this coming Monday, March 5, 2018.

But people are telling me they think the USPTO is actually open today.  If this is true, then maybe the resetting of response dates to Monday won’t happen after all.

I will investigate further.

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Hague Agreement, DAS, and four-character access codes

Today WIPO announced that starting today ( February 28, 2018) the Hague Agreement e-filing interface and international application form DM/1 have a new item to allow the provision of an access code via DAS.  What does this mean?  How will it affect you?  Is there anything bad that will happen to practitioners who don’t know about this or fail to make use of this new item?

Continue reading “Hague Agreement, DAS, and four-character access codes”

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Get your numbers in for the 2017 US trademark registration toteboard

It’s that time of year again.  A year ago we published the 2016 US Trademark Registration Tote Board and before that, the 2015 US Trademark Registration Tote Board.  Now it’s time to get your numbers in for the third annual US Trademark Registration Tote Board.

The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients obtain US trademark registrations in 2017.  The toteboard seeks to list US trademark registrations granted in 2017.    The closing date for the questionnaire will be Thursday, March 8, 2018.

You can see the previous Toteboards here.

To learn more and to report your numbers for the 2017 US Trademark Registration tote board, please click here.

It is also time to report your numbers for the 2017 US Design Patent tote board and the 2017 US Utility Patent tote board.

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Get your numbers in for the 2017 design patent toteboard

It’s time for the sixth annual US Design Patent Toteboard.

The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients to obtain US design patents in 2017.  It will rank the firms according to the number of US design patents obtained.  Respondents are asked to report only US design patents for which the firm is listed on the front page of the granted patent.  Please respond by Thursday, March 8, 2018.

You can see the previous Toteboards here.

To respond to be listed in the 2017 US Design Patent Toteboard, click here.

It’s also time for the third annual US Utility Patent Toteboard.  To learn how to respond to be listed in that tote board, click here.

It’s also time for the 2017 US Trademark Registration Toteboard.  To learn how to respond to be listed in that tote board, click here.

 

 

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Get your numbers in for the 2017 US utility patent tote board

A year ago I published the 2016 US Utility Patent Toteboard, and a year before that the 2015 US Utility Patent Toteboard.  Now it’s time to finalize and publish the 2017 Utility Patent Toteboard.

The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients to obtain US utility patents in 2017.  It will rank the firms according to the number of US utility patents obtained.  Respondents are asked to report only US utility patents for which the firm is listed on the front page of the granted patent.  Please respond by Thursday, March 8, 2018.

You can see the previous Toteboards here.

To respond to be listed in the US Utility Patent Tote Board, click here.

It’s also time for the sixth annual US Design Patent Tote Board.  To learn how to respond to be listed in that tote board, click here.

It’s also time for the 2017 US Trademark Registration Toteboard.  To learn how to respond to be listed in that tote board, click here.

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Gigabit Internet service

The other day I was in the hallway outside of our firm’s office, standing at the top of a stepladder, stringing some fiber optic cable through the drop ceiling.  A passer-by (a nice fellow from Redpoint Global, a software house next door to our office) saw the fiber optic cable that was being installed, and asked (he sounded envious) if we were getting gigabit ethernet.  I had to disappoint him — we were merely running fiber from one part of our office to another, not to the Internet.

But it got me thinking.  What does it cost these days to get a gigabit connection to the Internet?  I was astonished to learn that it costs less these days than it used to cost.  For $110 per month, I now have gigabit internet in my home.  I’ll describe the process and the results. Continue reading “Gigabit Internet service”

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How fast is your internet connection?

You might wonder how fast your internet connection is.  A typical way to do this is to download a large data file from someplace on the Internet, and to see how long it takes.  You might wonder whether somewhere along the way, the data file is getting compressed.  The way to eliminate that possibility is to pick a data file that is incompressible.  To do this, you simply need to make sure the content of the data file is truly random.  With this in mind, I offer a couple of PNG image files that are truly random in content.  You can use them to test how fast your internet connection is.

Continue reading “How fast is your internet connection?”

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Can’t or won’t use Let’s Encrypt? Cheap SSL cert

Summary:  The savvy webmaster in 2018 should probably be using the free-of-charge and very convenient Let’s Encrypt system for “https://” certificates on web sites.  But this post mentions that for the webmaster who can’t or won’t learn how to use Let’s Encrypt, and who instead stubbornly carries out annual (and fiddly manual) certificate renewals using SSL certificates that cost money, there is a certificate authority that provides SSL certificates for a mere $8.88 per year instead of the $60 or $149 per year that the webmaster is paying now.

If you have a web site, you should probably forward this blog article to your webmaster.  Hopefully he or she will be able to tell you that either (a) you are already using Let’s Encrypt or (b) you are only paying $8.88 per year for your SSL certificate!

Continue reading “Can’t or won’t use Let’s Encrypt? Cheap SSL cert”

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Design Day 2018

Design Day 2018 will be Wednesday, April 25, 2018.  As usual it will take place in the auditorium in the Madison Building in Alexandria, Virginia.

Design Day always sells out.  As soon as I learn of the signup opportunity I will post it in this blog.  If you are planning to attend, please be sure to sign up right away before it sells out.