Patent on the Web Upgrade The USPTO has upgraded the USPTO Full Text and Image Database. It now uses PDF images instead of TIFF images which provides several new benefits including the ability to print full documents. Patent images may…
Copyright law protects a work from the time it is created in a fixed form. From the moment it is set in a print or electronic manuscript, a sound recording, a computer software program, or other such concrete medium, the…
Picking a trademark is an incredibly important part of starting a business or bringing a new product line to market. The ability to protect the mark depends on its distinctiveness. Some marks are generic or descriptive, while others are highly…
When a mark in a trademark application includes a name, portrait or signature of a living individual, that person’s consent must generally be sought before the Trademark Office will register the application. This is to prevent the registration – and…
Below I review some basic information about copyright and the creation and ownership of copyright protection. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to…
In the past 6 months, I’ve noticed in my own practice that the Patent Office has increased the speed with which a first office action is issued, compared to historical numbers. However, the sequester has had an effect on the…
John Welch writes over at TTABlog today about the recent refusal of Craigslist’s application to register a trademark for the peace symbol. It is a very interesting post on a not-frequently-seen area of trademark law. While generally a trademark can…
A continuation patent application is a type of continuing application. Yes, “continuation” does have a separate meaning from “continuing,” and each are proper terms in patent-ese. A few weeks ago I wrote about divisional applications, which are another type of…
A trademark application will be abandoned by the Trademark Office if a deadline passes without you taking certain action. This can happen, for instance, if the Trademark Office has issued you an Office Action that requires a response, and the…
There is a whole world of patent applications beyond the original nonprovisional patent application. There are provisional, plant, design, reissue, divisional, continuation, continued prosecution, and continuation-in-part applications. These last four applications are known as continuing applications, because they continue from…