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<p>Thank you Ken for posting.</p>
<p>I have several reactions to this.</p>
<p>First, Ken's postings in the past few months about character
coding have prompted me personally to try to learn about Unicode.
It is a fascinating world, this Unicode. As time goes on, I must
imagine that trademark offices around the world will eventually
gain familiarity with Unicode. The result, eventually, will be
better ways of searching, and better ways of storing mark
information for searching. And better ways of receiving trademark
applications in the first place, with applicants providing Unicode
representations of marks rather than mere images of marks. <br>
</p>
<p>Second, Ken's postings have laid bare the many ways in which
Trademark Center (and USPTO's other related internal systems for
trademark application workflow) have failed to keep pace with
Unicode. Yes it is one thing if, within recent days, the USPTO
coders belatedly started to check to see if the "mark" field in an
application is or is not composed solely of "standard
characters". But it is clear the USPTO coders have not been
checking to see if other fields (such as the "translation" field
and mailing address) contain non-ASCII Unicode characters. </p>
<p>WIPO, as the administrator of the PCT, Madrid, and Hague systems,
has historically served the IP community by nudging the world's
intellectual property offices along towards current developments.
There are many examples of this. See for example the ST.26
standard for submission of computer-readable genetic sequence
listings. I have to imagine that our friends at WIPO are trying,
as best they can, to think about Unicode. One of the challenges,
of course, is that because of the way that Madrid Protocol is
structured, nobody can file a Madrid application directly at the
International Bureau. (Direct filing at the IB is possible for
PCT and Hague applications, but not for Madrid applications.)
Instead, the only entry path for a Madrid application is a filing
in one or another of the Offices of Origin. OoOs surely differ
greatly from one to the next as to the richness or paucity of the
various data fields. For all I know there may be some OoOs for
which the filing path even now in 2025 is in the nature of stone
tablets with chiseled writing. <br>
</p>
<p>Some trademark offices are in places where non-Latin (non-ASCII)
characters are very important. Here you can see (<a
href="https://www.wipo.int/en/ipfactsandfigures/trademarks">WIPO
web site</a>) a ranking of the ten biggest users of the Madrid
system:</p>
<ol>
<li>US</li>
<li>Germany</li>
<li>China</li>
<li>France</li>
<li>UK</li>
<li>Switzerland</li>
<li>Japan</li>
<li>Italy</li>
<li>Korea</li>
<li>Australia</li>
</ol>
<p>China, Japan, and Korea show up in the top ten, and in each of
those places, non-Latin (non-ASCII) characters are very
important. My sense is that Unicode by now supports most
languages including Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese
(katakana, hirigana, and kanji), and Korean (hangul). Hopefully
eventually the highest-volume trademark offices will get together
to try to work out ways to make use of Unicode for filing of
trademark applications, for searching, for publication, and for
other workflow purposes. Hopefully eventually it would reach the
point where a Madrid filing could contain a Unicode mark, and no
matter which Office is designated, the IB could transmit the
designation to the designated Office and that Office could
actually know what to do with the Unicode characters. <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/15/2025 2:40 PM, Ken Boone via
E-trademarks wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:SN6PR14MB22370CCA7D850B51152261D8D5B22@SN6PR14MB2237.namprd14.prod.outlook.com">
<div class="elementToProof">
Following are 4 recent registrations with Unicode characters in
the translation/transliteration fields (as evident on the TSDR
summary tab). In each case, the Registration Certificate simply
dropped the Unicode characters.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<div>
<span>Drawing</span></div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
<span>SN</span></div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
<span>RD</span></div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
<span>Comment</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div>
<u><img
alt="previously viewed
Image for 98496184, select for more details"
id="x_image_2" moz-do-not-send="true"></u></div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
98496184</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
01/21/25</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
Translation:\u2002\u2002The wording Benbo<span><b>\u5954\u535a</b></span> has
no meaning in a foreign language.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>
Reg. Cert.: The wording Benbo has no meaning in a
foreign language.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div>
<u><img
alt="previously viewed
Image for 98469783, select for more details"
moz-do-not-send="true"></u></div>
<div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
98469783</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
04/08/25</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
Translation:\u2002The English translation of <span>
<b>\u96ea\u51b0</b></span> in the mark is SNOW ICE.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>
Reg. Cert.: The English translation of in the mark is
SNOW ICE.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div>
<u><img
alt="previously viewed
Image for 98384496, select for more details"
id="x_image_0" moz-do-not-send="true"></u></div>
<div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
98384496</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
02/11/25</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
Translation:\u2002\u2002The English translation of <b>\u91d1\u6ee1\u5ead</b> in
the mark is Gold Filled Palace.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>
Reg. Cert.: The English translation of in the mark is
Gold Filled Palace.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div>
<u><img
alt="previously viewed
Image for 98018070, select for more details"
id="x_image_1" moz-do-not-send="true"></u></div>
<div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
98018070</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
02/04/25</div>
</td>
<td>
<div>
Translation:\u2002\u2002The English translation of <span>
<b>\u745e\u5b89\u623f\u5730\u7522</b></span> in the mark is auspicious;
peaceful; real estate.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>
Reg. Cert.: The English translation of in the mark is
auspicious; peaceful; real estate.</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div class="x_elementToProof" id="x_Signature">
<div>
Happy Unicoding!?!?!</div>
<div>
Ken Boone</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="moz-mime-attachment-header"></fieldset>
</blockquote>
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