(Update: the USPTO fixed its mistakes — see blog article.)
Yesterday (Tuesday, April 9, 2024) was registration day for two of my trademark applications. I know this because, among other things, I am in possession of the official Certificates of Registration, which the USPTO cryptographically signed on March 24, 2024. Which means that the USPTO has known the registration numbers since at least as long ago as March 24 (more than two weeks ago). But the USPTO trademark databases are broken.
The first indication of the USPTO trademark databases being broken was on registration day, in the Official USPTO Notice of Registration, quoted above. See if you can spot the missing registration number in the Notice.
It gets worse. Even today, April 10, which is the day after registration day, the registration number is missing from TSDR. Today, the day after registration day, the “Maintenance” tab is missing from TSDR. Today, the day after registration day, you could do a search in Tmsearch checking the box to filter only for “registered” marks, and this registration does not turn up in the search results. (This registration turns up in Tmsearch only if you check the box to say that you want “pending” marks.) Today, the day after registration day, you could do a search in Tmsearch looking for this registration number, and no matter whether you say you are searching checking the box to filter only for “registered” marks or “pending” marks or both, the search comes up empty.
Maybe I was the only one who got lucky? Maybe the USPTO got it wrong only for my two cases that issued yesterday? Nope. I clicked around in yesterday’s Official Gazette to look at some of the six thousand trademark registrations that were issued yesterday, to see how bad this broken database problem is. Spot-checking through the six thousand registrations issued yesterday, it looks like the USPTO databases are broken for all six thousand registrations, in at least the four ways described above. For each case from the Official Gazette that got published yesterday that I spot-checked:
I imagine this blog article will eventually prompt the Trademark Office to correct its databases for the six thousand registrations that issued yesterday. I wonder how many days that will take.
Did you have a USPTO trademark registration issue yesterday? Was your Official USPTO Notice of Registration broken like the ones quoted above? Please post a comment below.
2 of those 6000 were for my clients. It seems to be something different every couple of weeks. I also don’t understand why the PTO started sending a NOTIFICATION OF “NOTICE OF PUBLICATION” at the same time that it send the actual “NOTICE OF PUBLICATION.”
The NOTIFICATION OF “NOTICE OF PUBLICATION” was always in the case file, but wasn’t “sent”. Perhaps it’s existence triggered the sending of the “NOTICE OF PUBLICATION”? And now there’s been a decision that every notice or notification in the case file must actually be sent?
I also had a blank registration number in the USPTO email. I went to TSDR yesterday (the date of registration), and was able to download the registration certificate, which had the reg number. I did not check the digital certification date. The registration certificate is still in TSDR, even though the registration number is missing today.
My experience is the same as Michael’s. There is no registration number in the email, but the registration certificate has the number. The certificate was issued on April 9. Status on TSDR still shows “review prior to publication completed” as of today (April 10).
I got a blank registration notice on April 9 too, but today (April 10) got a “corrected notice” with the registration number. Curiously, both notices are listed in the documents tab dated April 9 despite being issued on different dates.
The mark is listed as “pending” when it shows up in the search, but once you click on the listing in the search results it shows as registered on the status page of TSDR.