Hello Again, last Monday, May 13th I was granted a meeting at the USPTO Alexandria, VA headquarter office with Commissioner David Gooder, Charles Joiner and Jason Lott.
My daughter/driver crashed the meeting!
I was comforted to find, we were much more on the same side than I had thought. Our concerns of the overall trademark marketplace were shared.
From the difficult to learn database providers to do comprehensive trademark research, to the unscrupulous trademark attorneys who fear liability in doing research, to trademark services who lie about offering “comprehensive trademark research” to the 40-60 outright scam trademark services proliferating at an exploding rate these past 6 months.
We all see the trademark marketplace as fractured at this time and getting worse.
We talked about the extra costs being assumed at the USPTO in having to deal with SO MANY bad trademark applications, where comprehensive trademark research was NOT done, to all the simple mistakes being made by trademark applicants. The extra work has caused the USPTO to increase its Examining Attorney force from 400 to 900 over the past 4 years. This is a major reason the USPTO is considering a fee increase.
Mr. Gooder confirmed trademark applications were dropping from 900,000 to 700,000 over these same years. (See March 31 post, for trend, below.)
We talked about the 21,000 terminated trademark applications which were deemed to be void at the moment of filing, because of ill prepared application – like forged names on applications. This is a practice some of our low priced competitors still do.
We discussed the USPTO policy change over a year ago requiring foreign trademark filers to hire USA based trademark attorneys to represent them, in an effort to cut fraud.
Mr. Gooder stress how the USPTO is actively seeking ways to combat bad applications from being filed in the future with new educational efforts to the public and attorneys alike.
On the USPTO trademark entry page, (https://www.uspto.gov/
SEARCH TRADEMARKS
Why Search for Similar Trademarks?
https://www.uspto.gov/
Comprehensive Clearance Search for Similar Trademarks
https://www.uspto.gov/
Federal Trademark Searching
https://www.uspto.gov/
PROTECT AGAINST SCAMS
Spoofed Calls that Impersonate the USPTO
https://www.uspto.gov/
What to do if you’ve been Scammed
https://www.uspto.gov/
Understanding Filing Firms
https://www.uspto.gov/
Administrative Sanctions Process
https://www.uspto.gov/
If you’d like to give some give your comments directly to the USPTO, especially in light of their proposed fees hikes, You can submit comments until May 28 via the green “Submit a formal comment” button: https://www.federalregister.
In my next article I’ll write about the affect of today’s trademarking choices, as I have seen on small businesses, which I tried to share at this same meeting to the USPTO brass.
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Thank you, Chris DeMassa 650-948-0530
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Email – staff@tmexpress.com
Web Site – tmexpress.com