<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>I am delighted with a recent interaction with the USPTO's
post-registration branch.</p>
<p>I am getting ready to do a ten-year trademark renewal in a case
that originally identified some forty words of goods in each of
two trademark classes. This is a case that had its six-year
trademark renewal about four years ago. In the six-year renewal,
the registrant canceled one of the classes. In that renewal, the
registrant also canceled all but about six words of the remaining
class.</p>
<p>What I found when I tried to use TEAS recently to prepare the
ten-year renewal was:</p>
<ul>
<li>the canceled class was still there in TSDR, and</li>
<li>the canceled goods in the remaining class were still there in
TSDR.</li>
</ul>
<p>This left the would-be TEAS renewal filer in the position of
wrongly having to cancel the canceled class all over again, four
years after it had been canceled.</p>
<p>This left the would-be TEAS renewal filer in the position of
wrongly having to cancel the thirty-four words in the remaining
class all over again, four years after those words had been
canceled.</p>
<p>I phoned up the post-reg branch, reaching a nice person whom I
suppose I should not name in a public way but whose initials are
FB. This nice person took down my registration number and opened
it in TSDR. With no prompting from me she proceeded to tell me
her guess as to why I was calling and what the problem was. I
imagine she looked at the dates and figured I was getting ready
for a ten-year renewal. I imagine she looked at the six-year
renewal and saw that the clerk who handled that renewal had failed
to "bracket" the canceled goods in TSDR. She asked if it would
serve my needs if she were to insert the brackets into the IDs
that the clerk four years ago had failed to insert.</p>
<p>Gobsmacked by this person so correctly working out (instantly!)
why I was calling and what to do next, I somehow managed to
stammer out "yes, please".</p>
<p>While this was going on, I went back to TEAS and once again
clicked to gin up a ten-year renewal. While I was on the phone
with this nice person, I was able to see that she had somehow
managed to update the ID in real time and that this update had
already become available to the TEAS system. The only thing left
in the TEAS recitation of goods was indeed the desired six words
of goods.</p>
<p>I then realized that I might as well press my luck and ask
whether the person who did the six-year renewal four years ago
(the person who had failed to do the bracketing) might still
happen to be in the post-reg branch. The nice person said yes,
that person was indeed still in the post-reg branch. She offered
to drop an email to that person to gently suggest being more
careful in future about doing the bracketing. The tone of this,
as communicated by today's nice person, was clearly to simply
offer a constructive comment to that person for the benefit of
future renewal registrants.</p>
<p>What a delight to interact with a paralegal who is smart, and who
handles an inquiry in an intelligent way that serves the shared
interests of the Office and of the Registrant.<br>
</p>
</body>
</html>