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<p>Thank you Ken.</p>
<p>This is, of course, a <i>pro se</i> case. And not that it's
relevant to the present topic of USPTO failing to handle Unicode
correctly, I have to imagine the Examiner is going to refuse to
enter the amendment on the grounds that adding color is a material
alteration.</p>
<p>Returning to the Unicode topic.</p>
<p>There have been several of these
USPTO-failing-to-handle-Unicode-correctly cases where the seeming
common theme is that the filer used one or more characters that
are unnecessarily exotic. Here, for example, the application as
filed used the "U+0412 : CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER VE" which in
terms of ink on the page looks almost exactly like the Latin or
Roman (or ASCII) letter "B".</p>
<p>Sometimes when somebody uses (for example) a Cyrillic VE ("\u0412")
instead of a Latin B, it is because the person is trying to be
sneaky and get away with something. For example the sneaky person
registered the Internet domain name "CITI\u0412ANK.COM" (using the Cyrillic
VE) and is planning to try to use it to steal money from customers
of the real Citibank by setting up a fake duplicate of the
Citibank web site.</p>
<p>Here, I don't immediately see anything in the TSDR record that
suggests the trademark applicant is trying to get away with
something evil. </p>
<p>Well, I guess I could think of one thing an applicant might be up
to here.</p>
<p>Let's suppose our applicant in this case had done a search of
Office records and saw that somebody already has a strong
trademark registration for a standard-character word mark that
looks just like this pending mark (in terms of ink on the page).
And suppose the applicant is worried that that Examiner might
impose a 2d refusal over that standard-character registration. So
then maybe the applicant hopes the Examiner will copy and paste
the applied-for characters (including the Cyrillic VE) into the
Examiner's search system and will get no hits. And thus no 2d
refusal.</p>
<p>I don't mean to say that I have any particular reason to think
the applicant is really trying to do this. I am just trying to
guess about things.</p>
<p>But then it seems to me that we would be reduced to trying to
guess what innocent sequence of events would lead to this case
having (for example) a Cyrillic VE ("\u0412") instead of a Latin B.
Was this the result of a super-buggy OCR engine within TC? </p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/6/2025 11:27 AM, Ken Boone via
E-trademarks wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DS0PR07MB103540362347771404D8985B1D5E3A@DS0PR07MB10354.namprd07.prod.outlook.com">
<div class="elementToProof">
Trademark Experts,</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
Caution: It appears that the TEAS Voluntary Amendment form does
not understand Unicode characters outside the ASCII character
set, substituting question marks (?) for such Unicode
characters. </div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span>Consider 99414215, filed on 9/26 with </span><span><b>\u0412
CCETTA \u0412\u041e\u0421\u0421\u0415 RE INVENTED</b></span><span> appearing as the
wordmark.</span></div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>
<img alt="Image for 99414215" moz-do-not-send="true"></div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span>Today, </span><span><b>?OCCETTA ????? RE INVENTED</b></span><span> is
presented as the wordmark. Why? The Prosecution History
shows that on Oct. 05, 2025, a TEAS VOLUNTARY AMENDMENT was
received, amending the drawing (the original drawing did not
include colors). The new literal element
</span><span><b>? CCETTA ????? RE INVENTED</b></span><span> was
provided. (I do not see any evidence that Pre-Exam has
performed any edits of this new application yet {i.e, the
prosecution history does not include the </span><span><i>NEW
APPLICATION OFFICE SUPPLIED DATA ENTERED</i></span><span> entry}.)</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span>Using Carl's favorite character dumper (<a
id="LPlnk833692"
href="https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html</a>),
the original wordmark
</span><span><b>\u0412 CCETTA \u0412\u041e\u0421\u0421\u0415 RE INVENTED</b></span><span> has
multiple Unicode characters.</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0412 : CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER VE</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0020 : SPACE [SP]</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0043 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0043 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0045 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0054 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0054 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0041 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0020 : SPACE [SP]</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0412 : CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER VE</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+041E : CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER O</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0421 : CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ES</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0421 : CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ES</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0415 : CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IE</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0020 : SPACE [SP]</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0052 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0045 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0020 : SPACE [SP]</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0049 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+004E : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0056 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0045 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+004E : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0054 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0045 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
U+0044 : LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span>I'm concluding that the newly provided literal element
</span><span><b>? CCETTA ????? RE INVENTED</b></span><span> closely
matched the original wordmark
</span><span><b>?OCCETTA ????? RE INVENTED</b></span><span>, but
that the TEAS VOLUNTARY AMENDMENT did not recognize the
Unicode characters outside the ASCII character set.</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<br>
</div>
<div class="elementToProof">
BTW, everyone has noticed that the Beta viewer for Trademark
Search still provides incomplete information, right? The
<b><i>Announcements </i></b>page still shows the notice <span>
Update: </span><span>On September 24</span><span>, we
temporarily disabled some of these new beta features to test
them further. We'll remove this message once they are
restored.</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof">
<span><br>
</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof">
Happy Trademark Amending,</div>
<div id="x_Signature">
<div class="elementToProof">
Ken Boone</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="moz-mime-attachment-header"></fieldset>
</blockquote>
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