Beware of Official-y Correspondence

Once you get that trademark filed be aware that your information is of public record, which means, unfortunately, some will mine that resource & some of those folks will send you solicitations. 

These solicitations often look very official, and "may use names that resemble the USPTO name, including, for example, one or more of the terms "United States," “U.S.,” "Trademark," "Patent," "Registration," "Office," or "Agency."  

Some will even have documents that resemble actual government documents rather than what you'd expect a company to send and this is often done by "emphasizing official government data like the USPTO application serial number, the registration number, the International Class(es), filing dates, and other information that is publicly available from USPTO records."

Most of these are asking you for money. That's your major warning flag.

"All official correspondence will be from the “United States Patent and Trademark Office” in Alexandria, VA, and if by e-mail, specifically from the domain “@uspto.gov.”

If you did receive something that you're not too sure about go ahead and forward it to me - shannon at tmexpress dot com - and I can confirm if it's official or not.

Read more about what the USPTO has to say about this here.

The Trademark Information Network

Awhile back the USPTO launched a media component to their trademark page, namely, the Trademark Information Network. From this page you can watch a number of different videos that discuss the basics of trademarks and all the way up to post-registration issues.

Have you watched any? What did you think?

I'll devote some posts to watching these videos & provide a critique/reaction to each one.

Breaking Down the Code

Last month we took a quick look at how to conduct a logo search at the USPTO. This month let's look closer at the USPTO Design Code Manual.

All designs have a 6-digit code, which the USPTO assigns to each filed design. The design search code system is very Dewey Decimal-esque in that each 2-digit section denotes a specific category. Let's take a look at a couple of famous examples:

First two digits, the Category: 02 = human beings

Next two digits, the Division: 05 = children

Last two digits, the Section: 01 = heads, portraiture, busts of children not in profile

The Gerber baby logo is categorized as 02.05.01

Now let's look at a design that contains several codes. This will illustrate just how complex filing a trademark for a logo can be, in terms of researching a logo and providing the correct description on the application to the USPTO.

Mr. Peanut, the logo and mascot of Planters Nuts is categorized into SEVEN different design codes:

02.01.32 - Astronauts (men); Frogmen; Men, other, including frogmen, men wearing space suits and men wearing monocles; Monocles (men wearing)
02.01.34 - Monsters (not robots); Other grotesque including men formed by plants or objects
04.07.02 - Objects forming a person; Person formed by objects
05.07.05 - Nuts (edible), With shells
09.05.02 - Top hats
10.03.02 - Canes, walking; Shepherds crook (staff); Walking sticks and canes
16.03.08 - Contact lenses; Lenses, optical, and spectacle; Monocles

So you can see even a seemingly simple design, a peanut figure wearing a top hat, cane and monocle has a very complex design labeling assigned to it.

Please see here for further details about our Federal Design Trademark search services.

Fun With Graphs

Every year the USPTO publishes an online Performance and Accountability Report, which contains some pretty interesting statistics about patents & trademarks. I used this site to create a couple of graphs to provide a visual on these stats.

A 27% increase in 4 years is pretty significant. The increase every year goes to show how important folks are taking their trademarks & brand identity.

The above is a 5 year look at the number of registrations issued. As you can see, the number of applications filed versus those that move to registration differ greatly. This is going to be for a number of reasons -- refusals, abandonments, oppositions, etc.

Look at 2006 - 128,672 applications never made it to registration. Even if each one of those applications consisted of only 1 class filed, that's a total of $41,818,400. Let's even say that all 128,672 applications used TEAS Plus -- that's still a total of $35,384,800! That's staggering.

There's all sorts of statistics available so I'll be devoting a couple of more posts on the various findings.

US Patent & Trademark Office: Navigating the Web Site

Anyone that's had to slog through a governmental web site knows how confusing it can be at times. That being said, let's take a virtual walk together through the web site of the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Start at the home page.

You'll see a headline of sorts along with 3 columns of information. Left hand column are a series of links that drop down to show even more links – more about this to follow. The middle column is the site's top news with various headlines and blurbs. The right hand column are banner links that go to various pages/sites, such as the Department of Commerce, Kids' Pages, jobs at the USPTO, etc.

Left hand column – we're going to concentrate on 2 of the 13 available links.

Click on Patents – a drop down should open with a series of numbered links.

Let's take a look at a few a bit closer:

The very first link, not numbered, Patents main page takes you to the hub of the US patent universe. This is the main page where you can access all of the other related patent links.

Link #1 About Patents takes you right back to that main page, which is confusing. Ignore that. Instead from the main page, click on Basic Facts About Patents. This will give you a good idea of what a patent actually is.

Link #5 Search Patents takes you to the USPTO Patent Search page. From here you can search issued or published applications.

Link #6 File Online in EFS-Web takes you to the Patent Electronic Business Center. From here you can also search patents as well as file a patent application.

Back to the home page.

Link #1 Where Do I Start? is a great place to start. This page provides a pretty thorough road map of the trademark process.

Link #3 Search TM database takes you to the Trademark Electronic Search System. From here you can do a preliminary check of the Federal trademarks.

Link #4 File Online Forms goes to the Trademark Electronic Application System where you'd file a trademark application electronically.

Link #5 Check Status is the page every trademark owner should bookmark. This is where you can check your status using your Serial Number.

Link #6 View Full Files allows you to view all the associated documents with many of the Federal trademark filings. For instance, you can view your application or specimens. Also, if you receive an Office Action, a copy will be available here.

And there's a brief walk through of the most important patent and trademark links on the US Patent and Trademark Office web site. There are many more of course but the ones detailed above are those that will be most helpful to those starting the patent and trademark processes.