Ant-Like Persistence

January 11, 2020

Rebooting a server that is a thousand miles away

A year or so ago we migrated quite a few of our firm’s server functions, including this blog, and our firm’s main web site and our firm’s shopping cart, to a shared server in this large building (company web site) in Phoenix, Arizona (aerial photo at right). I’ve never been in that building and my best guess is I won’t ever be in that building. The shared server was on an equipment rack in a cage controlled by our hosting service provider. The building provides multiple connections to the Internet and diesel-powered backup power supplies. In the photograph you can see the diesel fuel storage tanks.

Shared servers are really good to know about. A shared server can provide a very inexpensive way to host many functions in a secure and reliable environment.

On a shared server, you are sharing processor and hard-drive and network-connection bandwidth resources with others on the same server. This means that if you were to use too much of the resources, your hosting service provider would suggest you move to a dedicated server. This also means that if some other user or users on the same server were to use a lot of resources at a particular time, your functions would get slowed down. If for example you were hosting a web site on the server, the web site might run slower for visitors to the web site, because of the activities of other users on the shared server. Another thing to keep in mind is that not all hosting service providers are created equal. Some providers will load too many users on a shared server, and the result will be that it runs slowly for everyone.

Back when we used a shared server at Godaddy, it often ran slowly. I imagine this is because Godaddy put lots of users onto each server. It is part of why we migrated to our present hosting service provider. During the time that we used a shared server with our present hosting service provider, it happened only very rarely that the shared server would run slowly for us.

A couple of months ago we migrated most of the functions that were on that shared server to a dedicated server. The dedicated server costs more per month, but of course there are benefits to its being a dedicated server. The server is very fast. It never slows down because of other users, because there are no other users. And you have “root access” meaning that you can do really neat things. One of the neat things that I was able to do is to set up Let’s Encrypt (blog article) in the AutoSSL of the cPanel (Wikipedia article) in this machine. The consequence of this is that we won’t ever again have to pay money for an SSL certificate for any web site on this server.

I haven’t ever actually seen our dedicated server, and I probably never will, but from its specs I can guess that it might look like the one pictured at right. It takes up one “rack unit” on an equipment rack in the same cage where the shared server was located.

The natural question that one might ask is, if we ever were to find the need to reboot our dedicated server, how would we do it? Would I need to get on an airplane, fly to Phoenix, present myself at this building, get myself admitted to the cage, figure out which server is mine, and push the “reset” button? Or would I need to contact our hosting service provider and beg and plead for them to send someone to the cage to do this?

Surely not.

So should the need arise, how would we reboot it? Continue reading “Rebooting a server that is a thousand miles away”

January 10, 2020

A fresh computer with no migration cost

When a notebook computer stops working, the usual next steps are:

buy a new notebook computer, and
spend at least two lost weekends getting the new computer loaded up and configured so that it does for you what the old computer used to do.

For must of us, the emotional cost of the second step, and the lost-professional-billing cost of the second step, far exceed the amount of money involved in the first step.

Yesterday I had to retire an old notebook computer and move to a new one. But for me, the second step was only about ten minutes. Not the usual two lost weekends. How did this delightful result happen? Continue reading “A fresh computer with no migration cost”

January 8, 2020

Petitions to the Trademark Office re domicile

Readers will recall my postings here and here and here about the Trademark Office’s recent Examination Guideline requiring trademark applicants to reveal to the public where they sleep at night.

Within recent weeks (see my blog post of December 29, 2019) I have filed petitions in some of my cases asking that the applicant be permitted to withhold this information from the public for reasons of personal privacy and safety.

I was dismayed to hear in the e-Trademarks listserv from a practitioner who reports that he filed such a petition on September 13, 2019 in one of his cases, and he recently telephoned the Office of Trademark Petitions to ask the status of his petition. He says he was told that there are many such petitions, and they are all “on hold”, and that we should not expect decisions on such petitions any time soon.

Have you had to deal with this? Have you filed such a petition? Was it granted? Please post a comment below.

January 8, 2020

IB will become a Depositing Office in DAS for Hague designs

Yes, dear reader, just like you I am delighted to see that this very exciting event will occur on January 15, 2020. And, dear reader, I can tell you that this blog posting is a scoop! You read it here first.

Yeah right. Okay folks — how many of our readers are already so familiar with the Hague Agreement system and with the DAS system that they instantly understand what this subject line means? Perhaps more importantly, how many of our readers can instantly devise an example of a fact pattern for a filer in which it somehow it will be helpful or make a difference that this event will have occurred on January 15, 2020? If you indeed already understand this one, good for you and you have my permission to skip reading the rest of this blog article. If you indeed already can describe some situation where the imminent membership of the IB in the club of Depositing-Office members of DAS for purposes of designs would be helpful to the filer, then you are indeed very trendy, modern and up-to-date and and you have my permission to skip reading the rest of this blog article.

For the rest of our readers, well, maybe you have a bit of work to do now, joining me in a discussion of why it is that we care that very soon, the IB will become a Depositing Office in DAS for the purposes of designs. Continue reading “IB will become a Depositing Office in DAS for Hague designs”

January 8, 2020

Who can figure out how I obtained this DAS certificate?

On November 18, 2019 I posted this blog article reporting the quite remarkable news that IP Australia had joined the DAS system for purposes of trademarks. Even now in January 2020 no other Office is a member of DAS for purposes of trademarks. In that blog article I proved to you that IP Australia must really be an Accessing Office for purposes of trademarks, and I did it by posting an actual Certificate of Availability from the DAS system, showing that US trademark application number 77087422 is available to IP Australia through the DAS system. But more than a month has passed during which no trademark practitioner raised the following questions:

How did I obtain this Certificate of Availability?
If the USPTO is not a depositing Office for trademarks, then how is it that this US trademark application is available to IP Australia in DAS?
To obtain this Certificate, I had to somehow get a DAS access code to plug into the DAS system. Where did I get this DAS access code, given that the USPTO does not provide DAS access codes for trademark applications?
And most importantly, how is it that no reader of this blog even caught on that these questions needed to be asked?

If you somehow figure out or already know the answers to questions 1-3, please post a comment below. In doing so, you will gain recognition as a truly trendy, modern, and up-to-date trademark practitioner.

January 3, 2020

What to do if your email service provider is blocking our listserv postings

Back on about November 17 we migrated our listserv server from a shared-hosting server to a dedicated server. This means that our listserv postings are coming from a different IP address now than they used to.

It seems that some email service providers have hair-trigger spam fighting systems that react in a very strong way to email traffic emanating from a new IP address. Some of the members of our listservs have have found that some or even all of our listserv messages are failing to reach them.

if this has happened to you, there are several things that you can do to help. Continue reading “What to do if your email service provider is blocking our listserv postings”

January 3, 2020

Only 103 “Super Patent” slots remaining out of 500

Readers will recall my blog article about “Super Patents” and how to get them. The idea is to file a PCT application and be fortunate enough that it gets accepted into the Collaborative Search and Examination (“CS&E”) pilot program.

This is a pilot program created by the five biggest patent offices (China, Europe, Japan, Korea, US) in which an applicant gets to have its claims searched and examined by all five patent offices. The pilot program began about a year and a half ago and will wrap up in 2020.

The way that the pilot program was set up, each of the five Offices was willing to take on the role of ISA for purposes of CS&E in one hundred PCT applications. Doing the math, this means that all told, five hundred PCT applicants would be so lucky as to get their applications into this program.

Each Office, in its role as ISA, was thus necessarily keeping track of the number of PCT applications that it had accepted into the CS&E program. Each Office would stop accepting new cases once it hit the limit of one hundred.

One of the offices hit its limit of one hundred a couple of weeks ago, and another office hit its limit just yesterday. Which raises the natural question, right now in January of 2020, how many slots are still open? I’ll tell you. Continue reading “Only 103 “Super Patent” slots remaining out of 500″

January 3, 2020

Another fax bites the dust – Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property

Yes, that patent office. The one where Albert Einstein worked as a patent examiner for a while before becoming famous. The Swiss patent office has has joined the ever-growing list of patent offices (previous blog post) that have officially stopped receiving faxes. You can see that Office’s January 2, 2020 update in the PCT Applicant’s Guide in which that Office notifies that it is pulling the plug on its fax machine.

January 3, 2020

Today is the day! Israel now belongs to Hague Agreement

Yes, today is the day that the Hague Agreement enters into force in Israel. This is an important development for the Hague system, which is the international filing mechanism for protection of industrial designs.

I blogged about this imminent development in Israel back on October 8, 2019.

As of today, companies and designers from Israel can begin using the Hague system to protect their industrial designs. The applicant can pursue protection in many countries through a single international application and a single set of fees.

Likewise from today, those located outside of Israel will be able to seek design protection in Israel through the Hague system.

The two-letter code is “IL”.

January 2, 2020