[E-trademarks] USPTO Unicode Growing Pains

[Carl Oppedahl]

See also 
https://blog.oppedahl.com/trademark-office-cant-handle-its-own-characters/

On 12/3/2024 6:33 AM, Ken Boone via E-trademarks wrote:
> I'm still reviewing updated trademark records for unexpected 
> occurrences of the ? (question mark) for standard characters occurring 
> in the wordmarks. The USPTO is making progress for handling Unicode 
> characters occurring in new TEAS filings, but some inconsistencies 
> continue to occur.
>
> Consider 98873773, filed Nov. 26, 2024.
>
> _previously viewed Image for 98873773, select for more details_
> I
> It is pretty obvious that some non-standard characters occur in the 
> trademark.  The current wordmark on TSDR and Trademark Search is *? 
> ???E?*, pretty much confirming that some non-standard characters occur 
> in the literal element provided in the application.  But the 
> description of mark, namely
>
> The mark consists of the image of Russian characters "БАСEД". The 
> image appears with a stylized "Я" resembling the Cyrillic character 
> for 'Ya' in a circle to the right and a star appears over the letter "E".
>
> includes a more accurate depiction of the characters occurring in the 
> trademark.  Well, here's a contradiction.  Viewing the raw application 
> on TSDR, the description of mark appears as (highlighting mine)
>
> The mark consists of the image of Russian characters "???E?". The 
> image appears with a stylized "?" resembling the Cyrillic character 
> for 'Ya' in a circle to the right and a star appears over the letter "E".
>
> where multiple characters appear as the ? question mark character. I'm 
> thinking that this is a TSDR blemish - that the TSDR display of the 
> raw application fails to properly display some of the Unicode 
> characters provided in the raw application.
>
> This description of mark inconsistency leads me to believe that 
> *Я БАСEД* was provided as the wordmark, but that USPTO wordmark 
> processing converted that wordmark to *? ???E?*, leading to an obvious 
> question: Shouldn't initial wordmark processing preserve the Unicode 
> characters occurring in the wordmark, versus the current conversion of 
> Unicode character to the *?* (question mark) character?
>
> Another example: 98866013, filed Nov. 21, 2024.
>
> _previously viewed Image for 98866013, select for more details_
>
> Again, it is pretty obvious that some non-standard characters occur in 
> the trademark.  The current wordmark is *XENTRALINKS ??*, but the 
> description of mark on TSDR is
>
> The mark consists of The literal element of the mark contains the 
> words "XENTRALINKS 榫鑰". The non-Latin characters in the mark 
> transliterate to Shun Yeuk in Chinese and this means "wooden key" in 
> English.
>
> Again, USPTO processing of the wordmark apparently converted the 
> Unicode characters *榫鑰* to *??*.
>
> For more examples, consider trying the search
>
> WD:/.*\?\?.*/ AND LD:true AND FD:[20241101 TO 20241130]
>
> that retrieves 15 trademarks filed last month with at least 2 
> consecutive occurrences of the question mark character in the wordmark.
>
> BTW, when Pre-Exam gets around to performing their initial processing 
> on these November filings, they'll likely delete the unexpected 
> question marks from the wordmark entries, versus substituting the 
> Unicode characters appearing in the description of mark entries to the 
> wordmark.  So it goes.
>
> Happy Trademarking,
> Ken Boone
>
> PS:  I currently have a list of about 270 live trademarks with 
> unexpected occurrences of ? for standard characters in the wordmark.  
> That is, some legacy problems for wordmark entries still have not been 
> corrected.  (There are also some € inconsistencies, including some 
> wordmarks where the string EURO occurs where the € is evident is the 
> drawing.)
>
> PPS: You might try the search *DE:( *榫* *鑰* *Я* *Б* Д*)* as you'll 
> notice that Trademark Search allows for search some Unicode 
> characters.  Also consider the standard character ā with decimal value 
> 257.  Try the wildcard search *WD:( *ā* )*, where you probably expect 
> that search would find any occurrence of the letter A in wordmarks, 
> but ...
>
>
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