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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/24/2024 4:49 AM, Carl Oppedahl via
E-trademarks wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:587121d6-f81c-4446-9cfc-47c359210cfb@oppedahl.com">
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Second, when the time came to enter the details of the 44e filing
basis, so far as I could see it is impossible to set forth that
the filing basis is a registration <i><b>granted by the European
Union Intellectual Property Office</b></i>. So I was forced
to go back to TEAS since TEAS does recognize EUIPO as a selection
for the 44e office of earlier filing.<br>
<p>This is a sad repeat of a blunder made by the developers of
Patent Center. With Patent Center as released, it was
impossible to claim priority from a prior application filed in
EPO (or in any other regional patent office). It was clear in
the case of Patent Center that the developers stupidly just
clicked around on the Internet for some list of "all of the
countries in the world" and copied and pasted that list into the
line of code that generated the drop-down list of would-be
priority Offices. Of course the developers of Patent Center,
who promised that they were going to replicate all of the
functions and features of EFS-Web, should have done a simple
code review of that part of EFS-Web and would have seen that the
drop-down list included some places <i><b>that are not
countries</b></i>. The European Patent Office is not a
country. But the developers of Patent Center had no clue that
the EPO is not a country, or that a customer of the USPTO might
need to claim priority from the EPO.</p>
<p>It took some weeks but eventually the developers of Patent
Center paid attention to our bug report from the Patent Center
listserv, and they fixed their mistake.<br>
</p>
<p>So here, too, what has apparently happened is the developers of
Trademark Center stupidly just clicked around on the Internet
for some list of "all of the countries in the world" and copied
and pasted that list into the line of code that generates the
drop-down list of would-be Offices for a 44e filing basis. Of
course the developers of Trademark Center, who represent to us
that they are supposedly replicating all of the functions and
features of TEAS, should have done a simple code review of that
part of TEAS and would have seen that the drop-down list
included some places <i><b>that are not countries</b></i>. The
European Union Intellectual Property Office is not a country.
But the developers of Trademark Center have no clue that the
EUIPO is not a country, or that a customer of the USPTO might
need to list EUIPO as a 44e filing office.</p>
</blockquote>
I carried out a line-by-line cross-check of the two lists (TEAS and
Trademark Center). Here are the two lists of things that don't
match.<br>
<p>Purported trademark offices that may be selected in TEAS, but not
in Trademark Center:</p>
<ol>
<li>American Samoa</li>
<li>Benelux</li>
<li>England</li>
<li>European Community - CTM</li>
<li>European Union Trademark - EUTM</li>
<li>Great Britain</li>
<li>Guam</li>
<li>Johnston Atoll</li>
<li>Navassa Island</li>
<li>Northern Ireland</li>
<li>Northern Mariana Islands</li>
<li>Puerto Rico</li>
<li>Scotland</li>
<li>US Virgin Islands</li>
<li>Wake Island</li>
<li>Wales</li>
</ol>
<p>Purported trademark offices that may be selected in Trademark
Center, but not in TEAS:</p>
<ol>
<li>Aland Islands</li>
<li>Antarctica</li>
<li>Congo, the Democratic Republic of the (note that this is not
the same as "Congo")<br>
</li>
<li>French Southern Territories<br>
</li>
<li>Kosovo<br>
</li>
<li>New Caledonia</li>
<li>Niue</li>
<li>Norfolk Island</li>
<li>Paracel Islands</li>
<li>Pitcairn</li>
<li>Reunion<br>
</li>
<li>Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha</li>
<li>Saint Pierre and Miquelon</li>
<li>South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands</li>
<li>South Sudan</li>
<li>Svalbard and Jan Mayen</li>
<li>Tokelau</li>
</ol>
<p>As for the seventeen purported trademark offices that may be
selected in Trademark Center, but not in TEAS, some are
particularly baffling. Paracel Islands, for example, is described
in Wikipedia like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ownership of the [Paracel] islands remains hotly contested.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) on mainland China, Vietnam,
and the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan all claim <i>de jure</i>
sovereignty, although the PRC has had <i>de facto </i>control
of the archipelago since the Battle of the Paracel Islands in
January 1974. <br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am pretty sure there is no trademark office operated by the
Paracel Islands.</p>
<p>I am absolutely sure there is no Antarctica trademark office. <br>
</p>
<p>The focus of this study of course, is to identify trademark
offices that ought to be selectable in Trademark Center but are
missing. This draws our attention to the sixteen offices that can
be selected in TEAS but cannot be selected in Trademark Center.
It is easy to pick out three regional trademark offices that can
be selected in TEAS but are missing from Trademark Center:</p>
<ol>
<li>Benelux</li>
<li>European Community - CTM</li>
<li>European Union Trademark - EUTM</li>
</ol>
<p>The second one (CTM) needs to be on the list for purposes of 44e
but is probably not needed for 44d. (More than six months have
passed since the last time anybody filed a CTM application.)</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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