The Patent and Trademark Office is unlikely to be closed if a government shutdown takes place tonight. The Office has a great deal of control over its own budget, and it maintains a reserve fund of money for certain situations…
A centralized listing of major Patent Application Initiatives is now available via the USPTO website that provides applicants with access to information on several patent initiatives designed to advance and support the examination process. Applicants now have a single website…
When an application has been fully examined and approved for issuance, the Patent Office issues a Notice of Allowance. The Notice of Allowance does not confer patent rights, however. You must still respond to the Notice of Allowance by both…
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 This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.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…