Posts

Posted on

In “In re Chestek LLC”, oral argument transcript now available

It will be recalled that on December 7, 2023, an oral argument took place before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for In re Chestek PLLC. This appeal relates to the USPTO’s requirement that a trademark applicant reveal to the USPTO where he or she sleeps at night.

A transcript of the oral argument is now available. You can listen to the audio recording of the oral argument here.  It is important to realize that the transcript that follows is based upon best efforts, but the authoritative source is the audio recording.

The recording is about 30 minutes in duration.   The judges on this panel were:

    • Judge Alan D. Lourie
    • Judge Raymond T. Chen
    • Judge Kara F. Stoll

The two speakers at the lectern were:

    • Andrew Grossman, for appellant in re Chestek PLLC
    • Mary Beth Walker, for appellee the USPTO

As a reminder you can see the appeal briefs here.

The transcript follows.

Continue reading “In “In re Chestek LLC”, oral argument transcript now available”

Posted on

Today’s oral argument for In re Chestek PLLC

(Update:  a transcript of the oral argument is now available. )

As I wrote recently (blog article) I will be an observer at the oral argument for In re Chestek PLLC.   It will be possible to listen to a live stream of the oral argument here.  The session begins today at 10AM Eastern Time.  A case called IOENGINE, PLLC v. lngenico Inc will go first (taking an estimated 40 minutes) and then the oral argument for In re Chestek LLC will take place.   To prepare for the event you may wish to review the briefs.  You can see:

Posted on

Being smart about receiving book royalties from Amazon

Let’s suppose that you have some book that is published through the Amazon publishing-on-demand platform (which very annoyingly is named “Kindle Desktop Publishing”).   And let’s suppose (keep with me on this) that you actually would like to receive your author royalties for this book.  It turns out that if you have an account with Wise Business, you can set things up to have a much better chance of actually receiving your royalties.  Continue reading “Being smart about receiving book royalties from Amazon”

Posted on

Picking a trusted place to back up your smart phone

click to enlarge

Let’s imagine something that might be unlikely (stick with me on this)  namely that you have a smart phone.  Yes I realize that you may have an old-fashioned phone that is not a smart phone.  But maybe it is an Android phone (yay!) or maybe it is an iPhone (some day you will migrate away to what I think is a better kind of smart phone, but I suppose no time soon).  And in the event that you do have a smart phone, let’s suppose you like the idea of backing it up to some trusted place.  What are the absolutely worst places to back up your smart phone (hint:  probably you are right now backing it up to a place that is not a good place)?    What is an example of a smart place to back up your smart phone?  Continue reading “Picking a trusted place to back up your smart phone”

Posted on

getting good use of your code-required smoke alarms

click to enlarge

If your home was constructed in the past twenty years, it almost certainly has several code-required smoke alarms.  You can see, at right, an example of this.  The home that I discuss here has half a dozen of these First Alert model 3120B smoke alarms.

The point of this blog article is to help you make some actual meaningful use of your code-required smoke alarms, above and beyond their intended function which is to permit the building inspector to grant a “certificate of occupancy” for the newly constructed home.  Continue reading “getting good use of your code-required smoke alarms”

Posted on

Has your membership in a listserv been disabled due to “excessive bounces”?

(Updated November 25, 2023 to recognize that if your email service provider is bouncing the normal listserv postings, your email service provider may also have bounced the warning message that was sent to you about your email service provider bouncing the normal listserv postings.)

In recent days, dozens of members of our intellectual property listservs have received (or at least have been sent) email warnings that start like this:

Your membership in the mailing list <blah> has been disabled due to excessive bounces.  The last bounce received from you was dated <recent date>. You will not get any more messages from this list until you re-enable your membership. You will receive 2 more reminders like this before your membership in the list is deleted.

If you received such an email warning, this is because (a) you belong to one or more of our listservs, and (b) you selected Microsoft (outlook) to be your email service provider.   But of course another possibility is that you did not receive this warning email message, because your email service provider bounced the warning email message too.  What should you do next? Continue reading “Has your membership in a listserv been disabled due to “excessive bounces”?”

Posted on

Coyote carrying box marked “ACME”

click to enlarge

And now a moment for a smile.  It turns out that there are at least two places where you can go and be warned to be careful if you see a coyote carrying a box marked “ACME”.  These places include Juneau International Airport and Redwood City, California.

Posted on

Telling twelve thousand people about four free webinars

click to enlarge

The map at right shows, in real time, our progress in letting twelve thousand people learn that they have an opportunity to attend four free-of-charge webinars about PCT forms.  As you can see, some 1600 emails have been sent (light green shading) to people in Asia and Africa and eastern and central Europe.  Just now, emails are being sent (dark green shading) to people in west Africa and parts of Greenland.  Some 11000 emails are waiting to be sent to people in North and South America.  Why did these emails not get sent all at once?  Continue reading “Telling twelve thousand people about four free webinars”