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There will be a significant change in International Search fees at the Korean Intellectual Property Office effective May 16, 2021. If you are an English-language filer and if you sometimes make use of ISA/KR in your PCT filings, this change might make a really big difference for you. Continue reading “A significant imminent change in ISA/KR search fees”
Series codes are very important. Anybody who regularly practices before the USPTO has more or less memorized the most commonly encountered series codes in his or her own daily work. If you see series code 62, you know it is a provisional application. If you see series code 29, you know it is a design application. Series code 91 means oppositions before the TTAB. Series code 92 means cancellation proceedings before the TTAB. Every now and then, a series code gets “used up” meaning that serial number “999,999” is reached in the series code, and then things roll over into a new and different series code. Provisionals, for example, used to be in series code 61 and before that they were in series code 60.
For over fifty years, for as long as there have been series codes at all, the trademark folks and the patent folks have carefully avoided ever using the same series code for different things. Now it seems that this past practice has been ignored. As far as I can see, this is a big mistake at the USPTO. Continue reading “what is USPTO’s series code 90?”
When an applicant in the EPO gets the good news that the applicant is going to receive an EP patent, one of the things that happens next is that the EP patent has to be “validated” in the one or more countries in the EPO area where protection is desired. This costs some money and takes some time.
In the EFS-Web listserv (a discussion group for US patent practitioners) the question came up why EPO validations cost as much money as they do, and why a rush fee might be imposed by an EPO validation service provider if instructions were given at the last minute. Indeed one might ask why there is an EP validation process at all? What is the problem for which an EP validation process is the solution? These questions prompted me to write this blog article. Continue reading “Why EPO validations cost as much money as they do”
Here is why you suddenly cannot log in at the USPTO since Saturday.
Two people at the USPTO screwed up. One of the people who screwed up did it yesterday, Saturday, March 6, 2021. The other person who screwed up did it a couple of years ago, and that screwup only came into prominent view yesterday. The screwups relate to what USPTO calls “authenticator app” two-factor authentication. The screwups affect most trademark practitioners who practice before the USPTO, and they affect most patent practitioners who practice before the USPTO, and they affect most paralegals and administrative assistants who work with those patent practitioners. Briefly, you need to delete your old “authenticator app” setup and you need to create a new “authenticator app” setup. Here are the details. Continue reading “Why you suddenly cannot log in at the USPTO since Saturday”
Just now I was checking the configuration of one of the routers in my firm’s network. I was struck to see the “uptime” report. This particular router has been up for 195 days.
I’d call that a rock-steady router.
Previously I celebrated these words in blog articles:
Today’s word is “imbrication”. Dear reader, I wonder if you know what “imbricated” means? Continue reading “Imbrication”
One of the responsibilities of the Director of the USPTO, carried out every Tuesday, is the signing of US patents and US trademark registration certificates. On Tuesday, January 19, 2021, Director Andrei Iancu’s signature was placed upon 5414 trademark registration certificates and 4605 patents. One of the trademark registration certificates appears at right, and I have highlighted his signature which appears just below the gold seal.
The following day, January 20, 2021, Mr. Iancu ceased to be the Director. Now the person performing the functions and duties of the Director is Drew Hershfeld, the Commissioner for Patents. I expect that this coming Tuesday, January 26, it will be Mr. Hirschfeld’s signature that will be placed upon the patents and the registration certificates.
(Update: a letter has been sent. See blog article.)
On July 2, 2019, the Trademark Office at the USPTO published a Final Rule stating that as of August 3, 2019, a trademark applicant would be required to reveal where he or she sleeps at night, in addition to stating his or her citizenship. I believe the Trademark Office did this at least in part because of the politics surrounding the Executive Order 13880 of July 11, 2019. In that Order, the then president wrote:
I disagree with the [Supreme] Court’s ruling, because I believe that the [Commerce] Department’s decision was fully supported by the rationale presented on the record before the Supreme Court. The Court’s ruling, however, has now made it impossible, as a practical matter, to include a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census questionnaire.
The then president ordered this:
I am hereby ordering all agencies to share information requested by the [Commerce] Department to the maximum extent permissible under law.
The Trademark Office is part of the Commerce Department and so was among the agencies subject to this order, and was thus subject to any requests from the Commerce Department about citizenship and domicile of trademark applicants. I blogged about this several times, including here on May 29, 2020.
On January 20, 2021, the present president signed an Executive Order saying this:
Sec. 5. Revocation. Executive Order 13880 of July 11, 2019 (Collecting Information About Citizenship Status in Connection With the Decennial Census), and the Presidential Memorandum of July 21, 2020 (Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census), are hereby revoked.
My hope is that the Trademark Office will now be able to amend its rule to relax the extent to which it demands to know where a trademark applicant sleeps at night. The inquiry should only be needed in those limited circumstances that arise when a non-US applicant has failed to hire US counsel, or, to put it differently, where the Trademark Office suspects a non-US applicant is faking a US residence in an effort to avoid having to hire US counsel. In any case where an applicant has hired US counsel, there should not be any reason, on or after January 20, 2021, for the Trademark Office to demand to know where the applicant sleeps at night.
I told you so. Four months ago I told you so. I told you to drop Whatsapp and switch to Signal in my article It is time to switch to a new end-to-end encrypted messaging app. Now in January of 2021 lots of people are finally realizing they should switch to Signal.
Please recall this article (August 23, 2020) in which I explain how to be smart about what kind of phone number to use as your user ID for Signal.
If you’d like to try messaging me with Signal, drop me a note at my email address with your Signal identifier telephone number and I will fire off a Signal message to you.
Yeah, I had Covid-19. I’m fine now. I’ll say a few words about how it went for me, but my reason for mentioning this is mostly to urge you to consider donating convalescent plasma (see blog article). Continue reading “Yeah, I had Covid-19”