Bluesky: @oppedahl.com
For more than three years now, there has been an urgent need for USPTO to fix a problem with its FFL rules, 37 CFR § 5.11 et seq. See my blog article USPTO needs to update its Foreign Filing License rule (October 29, 2016). After three years of being repeatedly reminded of this, USPTO has done the right thing and has published a proposed revision to its FFL rules. You can read about it here:
Comments are due by March 30. Twenty-one patent practitioners filed this comment.
A week ago I blogged that we migrated our OPLF speed test from our office in Colorado to a server farm in Arizona. At that moment our speed test was on a box that was connected to the rest of the world through 100base-T ethernet. That meant that the fastest speed you would ever see in the speed test is 100 Mbps. If your own Internet connection happened to be faster than 100 Mbps, then our speedtest would give you an unnecessarily pessimistic sense of the speed of your Internet connection. Just now we took a step that removes this unnecessary pessimism. Continue reading “Our speed test improved still more”
(Update: A letter got sent on February 22, 2020 to the Commissioner for Patents at the USPTO, asking the USPTO to pull the plug on DAS. See blog post.)
Yesterday in one of our cases, the USPTO retrieved an electronic certified copy of an EP priority application. In and of itself, this was routine news, except that we had to learn about this happy event by accident. Just accidentally I had this case open in Private PAIR and happened to click in IFW to see that the electronic certified copy had arrived.
The key thing here is that if our US case had claimed priority from almost any other Office than EPO, we would have been told in an automatic way, by email, that the successful retrieval had taken place. But no such automatic email arrived for this EP priority application. Why is this bad situation the way it is? Continue reading “USPTO dragging its feet on unplugging PDX”
On January 1, 2020 I invited everyone (blog post) to get your numbers in for the 2019 Tote Boards. This includes:
These Tote Boards will rank the top patent and trademark firms for carrying out filings in 2019 in these categories. The 2019 Tote Boards will join the previous fifteen Tote Boards which go back as far as 2012.
The closing date for getting in your numbers will be Friday, January 31, 2020.
How many responses do we have so far?
Every year, some firm misses out by failing to get its numbers in by the closing date. Don’t be that firm! Get your numbers in before closing day which is January 31. Click here for the:
(Thanks to the many commenters who gently pointed out that we are now in the year 2020! It is not a fake date at all.)
We have moved our speed test server from our Westminster office to our dedicated server in Arizona. The connection between our speed test server and the Internet is much faster now. Continue reading “Our improved speed test”
This blog post reminds us of the extreme importance of SAOSIT. CRISPR is an extremely important technology and several organizations are competing to see who will make money from CRISPR. A chief part of that competition is a fight to see who will control the most patents relating to CRISPR. Article 4 of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property says that for a patent priority claim to be valid, the second patent application needs to have been filed by the same applicant as the applicant in the first patent application, or by the successor in title. We call this SAOSIT (same applicant or successor in title). On January 16, 2020 the Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office made an important decision that relates to CRISPR and SAOSIT. The decision offers a reminder of ways that a patent applicant needs to be very careful when carrying out the filing of a PCT application or regional patent application or national patent application that makes a priority claim under Article 4 of the Paris Convention. The decision also offers a reminder of the ways that a patent applicant needs to be very careful when filing a US provisional patent application.
I had previously identified IP Australia as the Office that was the most trendy, modern and up-to-date so far as DAS participation is concerned. Of the 25 Offices participating in DAS, IP Australia stood alone as the only Office participating in every way that it is possible to participate.
But now a second Office has joined this high status. The Norwegian Industrial Property Office now stands as a second Office that participates in DAS in every way that it is possible to participate. Continue reading “Norway is now as trendy, modern and up-to-date as Australia”
(Update: TransferWise has changed its name to Wise Business.)
I have a prediction to make. My prediction is that within a year or two, every patent and trademark firm around the world that has a substantial international practice will have a TransferWise account. What prompts me to predict this? Continue reading “Eventually every patent and trademark firm will have a TransferWise account”
Yes, today is the day that the IB has become a Depositing Office for Designs.
You can read all about it here.