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July 4 a holiday at the USPTO

Tuesday, July 4, 2023 will be a federal holiday in the District of Columbia.  This means that the USPTO will be closed that day.

This means that any response that would normally be due on Tuesday, July 4 will be timely if made by Wednesday, July 5.

Note the important comment below from alert reader Dan Ferris:

It’s important to note that the “next business day” rule does not apply to the copendency requirement for filing divisional/continuation applications. Any such applications with parent applications issuing on July 4, 2023 should be filed no later than July 4, 2023.

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The Osborne Effect and Tesla superchargers

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Four car makers (Ford, General Motors, Rivian, and now Volvo) have announced that starting about a year from now, their newly manufactured EVs will have a charging port that permits charging at Tesla supercharging stations.  This will doubtless trigger the Osborne Effect (blog article).

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Volunteers sought for coding a PHP registration status monitor for VOIP.MS

Update!  I now have a status monitor working.  See blog article.

VOIP.MS is my preferred service provider for VOIP telephone service.  I am looking for one or two PHP coders to join me in constructing a PHP status monitor for monitoring the registration status of SIP trunks provided by VOIP.MS.  Continue reading “Volunteers sought for coding a PHP registration status monitor for VOIP.MS”

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False statement about DOCX returns to USPTO web site

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It will be recalled (blog article, May 30, 2023) that on May 28, 203, the USPTO had posted a false statement on the USPTO web site.  The USPTO said:

The USPTO strongly recommends submitting Specification, Claims, and/or Abstract in DOCX format which provides better data accuracy.

On May 29, a listserv member posted the question “Isn’t this false advertising or improper legal advice?” and a few hours later, the false statement disappeared from the USPTO web site.

Now on June 19, 2023, the false statement has quietly returned to the USPTO web site.  Quoted above is a screen shot taken on June 19, 2023 from USPTO’s Patentcenter web site.  Continue reading “False statement about DOCX returns to USPTO web site”

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Another submission to the CAFC on “where you sleep at night”

It will be recalled that there is an appeal pending before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on “where you sleep at night”.  Many months ago, the USPTO had filed a brief in that appeal, representing to the Court that it was protecting the “where you sleep at night” domicile addresses of trademark applicants from exposure to the public.  And it will be recalled that recently the USPTO revealed that for more than three years, it had failed to protect the “where you sleep at night” domicile addresses of applicants from exposure to the public, despite having promised to do so.  In other words, the representation in that brief was untrue.  The Associate Solicitor of the USPTO wrote a letter to the CAFC that sort of admitted this (blog article).

Now the appellant has filed a letter response.  You can see it here.  It is interesting reading.

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Learn how to receive ISA/EP correspondence electronically rather than by postal mail

Do you sometimes pick ISA/EP when you file a PCT application?  Is it a source of frustration that the communications from ISA/EP arrive only slowly, via postal mail, rather than electronically?  Would you like to learn how to set things up with an electronic EPO mailbox so that you can receive your ISA/EP communications electronically instead of by slow postal mail?  Continue reading “Learn how to receive ISA/EP correspondence electronically rather than by postal mail”

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USPTO breaks its promise about protecting “where you sleep at night” domicile addresses

The USPTO sent out email messages today reporting what it calls a “Data Security Incident”.  It turns out that the USPTO, which promised it would keep the “where you sleep at night” domicile addresses of trademark applicants safe and secure, instead revealed all of the “where you sleep at night” addresses in all of the USPTO’s APIs and bulk data products by which data miners collect data from the USPTO, over a period stretching from February of 2020 to March of 2023.

Astonishingly, CIO Jamie Holcombe tells us that he “fixed” the problem.  Continue reading “USPTO breaks its promise about protecting “where you sleep at night” domicile addresses”