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<p>Aha! There's a chance I learned something from Ken today. See
below.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/10/2025 12:41 PM, Ken Boone via
E-trademarks wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DS0PR07MB1035484B50CDD796F14D3892AD548A@DS0PR07MB10354.namprd07.prod.outlook.com">[...]
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
Following are some recent additions to my <b><i>challenging
standard character mark</i></b> watch list (where the reader
gets to determine why I decided these standard character marks
were
<i>challenging</i>).</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span>SN</span></div>
</td>
<td>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span>Wordmark</span></div>
</td>
<td>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span>Drawing</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<div class="elementToProof">
99181596</div>
</td>
<td>
<div class="elementToProof">
OMMISIMQIST\u200b</div>
</td>
<td>
<div class="elementToProof">
<u><img
alt="Image for 99181596, select for more details"
id="image_0" moz-do-not-send="true"></u></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Okay here is my guess as to why Ken deems this application number
99181596 to be "challenging". Prompted by Ken, I looked up that
case in TSDR. I then went to the application-as-filed to copy the
mark as filed. <br>
</p>
<p>On a quick glance one might assume that this mark contains eleven
characters, starting with "O" and ending with "T". But the alert
reader eventually catches on that there are not eleven but twelve
characters in this mark. Yes, after the "T" there is a twelfth
character. Maybe you can't see it, depending on what software you
are using to view the drawing, but it is there.</p>
<p>I then pasted the mark into <a
href="https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/ascii-to-hex.html">a
string-to-hex converter</a> and it revealed the hexadecimal
values of the characters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>4F 4D 4D 49 53 49 4D 51 49 53 54 200B</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This tells us that there are indeed twelve characters. We
recognize "4F" as the hex value for "O" and we recognize "54" as
the hex value for "T". And we then turn our gaze over to the
character after "T" (the character after "54"). The hexadecimal
value is "200B". Clicking around on the Internet reveals this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unicode character U+200B represents a Zero Width Space (ZWSP).
It is a non-printing character that does not take up any visible
space on the rendered text. It's used in computer typesetting to
indicate where word boundaries are, primarily for line breaking
purposes in scripts that don't use explicit spacing. <br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So yes, for this application number 99181596 we have a
twelve-character mark of which on a quick glance there might only
have been eleven characters. <br>
</p>
<p>Clearly what absolutely must not happen is the Trademark Office
sort of looking the other way and pretending that the mark has
only eleven characters. What must not happen is the case getting
published for opposition, and then going to registration, with
only eleven characters appearing in the registration certificate.
<br>
</p>
<p>There are many sad things here. A first sad thing is that
clearly the Trademark Office people who coded the software in the
Trademark Office systems failed to code it to flag this
(presumably) nonstandard character for the Examining Attorney to
pay attention to. It would have been trivially easy to do (for
example a regular expression could have detected it). But no,
this trivially easy thing did not get done. There is no hint or
suggestion anywhere in TSDR that anything at all has been done to
flag this situation for the Examining Attorney.<br>
</p>
<p>A second sad thing is that clearly the Trademark Office people
who coded the software in the Trademark Office systems failed to
code it to flag this (presumably) nonstandard character <i><b>during
the application process</b></i>. <br>
</p>
<p>As we sit here as third-party observers, of course we do not know
whether the applicant actively wants twelve characters in this
application (including the ZWSP) or whether, perhaps, it was an
inadvertent mistake on the part of the applicant.</p>
<p>But the ideal time to smoke this out would have been <i><b>during
the application process. </b></i>Trademark Center ought to
have flagged this to the filer. TC ought to have said something
like "we have detected a character in your drawing that is not a
standard character". And TC ought to have asked the filer to pick
one path or another depending on what the filer actually intended
for the drawing.<br>
</p>
<p>Again it would have been trivially easy to detect this (again,
for example a regular expression could have detected it). But no,
this trivially easy thing did not get done in the coding of TC.<br>
</p>
<p>I have of course loaded this application into IP Badger. The
case was filed in May, so maybe it will get examined in around
December. I will watch to see how the Examining Attorney handles
this twelfth character in the drawing.</p>
<p>Having said all of this, I realize I may not have figured out why
Ken calls this a "challenging" case. His reason for calling this
a "challenging" case may be something else.<br>
</p>
<p>Carl<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> <br>
</p>
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