[E-trademarks] [EXT] TEAS is broken?

Mon Apr 8 13:24:00 EDT 2024

While I agree with everything Carl says below, apparently someone at the PTO has convinced Vidal that expanding pro se applicants is an important policy for the PTO, even though those pro se applicants will be injured in the long run.

Best regards,
Richard A. Schafer | Schafer IP Law
P.O. Box 230081 | Houston, TX 77223
M: 832.283.6564 | richard at schafer-ip.com<mailto:richard at schafer-ip.com>

From: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Sent: Monday, April 8, 2024 12:12 PM
To: For trademark practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Subject: Re: [E-trademarks] [EXT] TEAS is broken?

Agreed.

And query whether it really does serve the shared goals (encouraging innovation, protecting IP) to encourage applicants to proceed pro se.  There are really a lot of things that would need to happen (that have not yet happened) for a pro se filing approach to be anything other than a likely disaster for the applicant.

Think of every time that a potential new client has come to you, 11 months after they filed a pro se provisional patent application, and you see the inadequacy of that provisional.  To the extent the USPTO succeeds in getting applicants to drink the pro se koolaid, it will mean that pro se non-provisional applications will get filed that are no better than the pro se provisionals that we all see.
On 4/8/2024 10:10 AM, Richard Schafer via E-trademarks wrote:
The reputational cost to the PTO for the poor quality of their IT systems is immense.

While practitioners can at least advise the client on how to work around the issues, U.S. clients may see this is yet another way in which the federal government is failing. Foreign clients will see these errors as another example of how the PTO is failing to achieve its primary function.

The PTO expends countless resources on encouraging pro se applicants and designing their systems to make them more usable by pro se applicants, but those IT systemic failures are no doubt driving those same pro se applicants away from pursuing protection for their inventions and trademarks.

Best regards,
Richard A. Schafer | Schafer IP Law
P.O. Box 230081 | Houston, TX 77223
M: 832.283.6564 | richard at schafer-ip.com<mailto:richard at schafer-ip.com>

From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com><mailto:e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Carl Oppedahl via E-trademarks
Sent: Sunday, April 7, 2024 9:42 PM
To: For trademark practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com><mailto:e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com><mailto:carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: Re: [E-trademarks] [EXT] TEAS is broken?

Thank you for posting.  Yes imagine what an impression this makes for your foreign client.

I am now in a position where I did eventually succeed in finishing the application that I was trying to create.  And I sent the link to my client.

I worry that when my client clicks on the link, the client might see such a worthless error message.  If so, it would make a bad impression for the client.
On 4/7/2024 8:30 PM, Alex Butterman wrote:
I have a client in China that tried to sign a new application we sent her company and she complained about the same error about a few minutes before your email. She showed her screen as:

[cid:image001.png at 01DA89AE.C2EA9800]

Hopefully, this is now permanently fixed since I suggested she try again on Monday morning their time.

Alex Butterman
Partner
DUNLAP BENNETT & LUDWIG
211 Church St., SE; Leesburg, VA 20175
T: 703-777-7319 – BIO<https://www.dbllawyers.com/attorney/alex-butterman/>
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From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com><mailto:e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Carl Oppedahl via E-trademarks
Sent: Sunday, April 7, 2024 04:54 AM
To: for trademark practitioners <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com><mailto:e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com><mailto:carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: [EXT] [E-trademarks] TEAS is broken?

I tried to file a trademark application just now.  Here is the rather unhelpful error message that TEAS provided:

[cid:image003.png at 01DA89AE.C2EA9800]

Then I tried again, and the error message changed to this:

[cid:image004.png at 01DA89AE.C2EA9800]

I checked the USPTO system status page and it did not list any planned outage for today at this time.  Those two USPTO failures happened when I was using Chrome.  Then I tried the same thing in Edge, and this was the error message:

[cid:image005.png at 01DA89AE.C2EA9800]

I wonder if anybody is able to file a trademark application just now?

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