In our office we track our PPH cases pretty closely. Through most of 2014 and most of 2015, we had been seeing delays averaging six months. It was taking the USPTO an average of six months to get around to deciding whether to grant or dismiss a PPH petition. I blogged about this problem here and here and here and here and here. I faxed a letter to Director Lee about this on April 24. One or two recent data points suggest that maybe USPTO is being less slow about this. Continue reading “USPTO being less slow in deciding PPH petitions?”
EPAS gets smarter
In the old days it was not easy to know whether the recordation of an assignment against a PCT application number would count in Assignments On The Web (AOTW) as an assignment against the US national phase of that same PCT application number. But now EPAS (the electronic patent assignment system) seems to be smarter about this.
Last chance to attend AIPLA PCT Seminar
Tomorrow and Friday are you last chance to attend the Nineteenth Annual AIPLA PCT Seminar. This will be at the Hilton in old town Alexandria. Walk-in registrations are welcome. See details here.
The previous Seminar, which took place this past Monday and Tuesday, was in San Francisco. It went quite well.
Who agrees with the USPTO on this specimen bounce?
The USPTO bounced this specimen. I wonder who agrees or disagrees with the USPTO bouncing this specimen?
Continue reading “Who agrees with the USPTO on this specimen bounce?”
Maybe you can’t say “Make America Great Again”?
(Trump files three more trademark applications: followup blog post here.)
Today the USPTO granted US trademark registration number 4,773,272 to Donald Trump. Yes, that Donald Trump. You can see the registration certificate here. (I blogged about the pending trademark application here.) Oh to be a fly upon the wall, to hear whether the other presidential candidates are now being advised by their trademark counsel that from now until the November 2016 elections are over, they must avoid uttering those four words in sequence.
When is Private PAIR not Private PAIR?
When is Private PAIR not Private PAIR? Or, to rephrase the question, what’s wrong with this picture?
USPTO gets it wrong on petitions to revive
We’ve had reason to review half a dozen cases in the past year in which, so far as we can see, the USPTO was completely wrong to dismiss a Petition to Revive. In some cases the USPTO bounced the petition on the grounds that the statement that the delay was unintentional was not signed by the applicant, and in one case the USPTO bounced the petition on the grounds that the statement that the delay was unintentional was not signed by all of the applicants. As I say, it appears the USPTO was completely wrong in its handling of the petitions to revive. Continue reading “USPTO gets it wrong on petitions to revive”
Someone changed the title of my PCT application?
A member of the PCT Listserv (which you should join) asked:
WIPO (or the ISA) changed the title of my PCT application. But I can’t work out when/where/how/why it was done. The A2 publication has one title (the one we gave it). The A3 publication has a slightly different title. Interestingly, the change narrowed the title in a similar way to the way the Written Opinion said that the claimed invention should be narrowed. Any suggestions?
Continue reading “Someone changed the title of my PCT application?”
Best Practices for docketing PCT
Here are a few thoughts about Best Practices for docketing and the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
(Thanks to alert reader Lynn F. McMiller who pointed out a typo in the article. Lynn will be receiving a free copy of the Bodenhausen book.)
(By the way, if you have not already done so, I suggest you sign up for the Nineteenth Annual AIPLA PCT Seminar, which is a week and a half from now. See this blog article for details.) Continue reading “Best Practices for docketing PCT”
Yet another reason to sign up for the AIPLA PCT Seminar later this month
There’s yet one more reason to sign up for the AIPLA PCT Seminar later this month. (July 20-21 in San Francisco, July 23-24 in Alexandria, Virginia.) If you sign up for the Seminar, this includes admission to a “primer” webinar on Tuesday, July 14. The primer provides an introduction to the PCT system so that attendees are better prepared for the Seminar itself which is a bit more advanced. You can see more information here.