[E-trademarks] Trademark Search: Missing Wordmarks For New TEAS Special Form Drawings???

[Ken Boone]

I've done some additional searching since Friday towards identifying when this missing wordmark phenomenon began.

The search UD:20241205 AND MD:unknown AND FM:* retrieves 509 trademarks.

The search UD:[20241206 TO *] AND MD:unknown retrieves 11,469 trademarks, but

the search UD:[20241206 TO *] AND MD:unknown AND FM:* does not retrieve any trademarks.

I conclude that for updates beginning December 6th and continuing through today's update, the Trademark Search update processing blocks the load of wordmark entries for trademarks having the UNKNOWN mark drawing code.  This change impacts TEAS and Madrid filings, whether live or dead.

While Carl thinks this change in USPTO processing was a coding blunder that should have been caught during testing, I'm thinking the change was intentional - that some USPTO manager requested and approved this change on Trademark Search - that the USPTO now requires Pre-Exam to review wordmarks and provide a valid mark drawing code for the wordmarks to be available on Trademark Search for searching - that inconsistencies for wordmarks between Trademark Search and TSDR for trademarks that have not been processed by Pre-Exam is NOT considered a problem.

Well, let's hope Carl is correct.

I'll be performing the UD:[20241206 TO *] AND MD:unknown AND FM:* search daily for the near future, but I am NOT optimistic that the USPTO will reverse the decision to exclude from Trademark Search wordmarks that haven't been reviewed and approved by Pre-Exam.

But there is good news, namely that this change on Trademark Search does not impact standard character marks.  Imagine not being able to search the wordmarks of standard character marks until Pre-Exam reviewed and approved those applications.

Happy New Year,
Ken Boone

________________________________

From: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2024 9:06 AM
To: For trademark practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Subject: Re: [E-trademarks] Trademark Search: Missing Wordmarks For New TEAS Special Form Drawings???


Thank you Ken for posting.

Like many of us old-timers in the trademark community, in an earlier life I did a lot of coding in several different programming languages.  Nowadays I find myself doing a lot of PHP coding (blog article<https://blog.oppedahl.com/how-to-find-a-php-programmer/>) for a variety of hobby projects.  I regularly make mistakes in my own coding, but then I realize my mistakes and I try to fix what I got wrong.

My main reaction to this recent posting by Ken is that the USPTO coders on these systems are simply not doing their jobs competently.   There are simple and straightforward things that competent coders can do to test their work before putting new code into production service.  And it is clear that the USPTO coders are failing to do such testing.  See the embarrassing results in this blog article from four months ago:  Trademark Office can’t handle its own characters<https://blog.oppedahl.com/trademark-office-cant-handle-its-own-characters/>.

On 12/27/2024 6:40 AM, Ken Boone via E-trademarks wrote:
I happened to notice that multiple recent TEAS applications that are NOT standard character marks do not have wordmark entries on Trademark Search, yet when I toggled to TSDR, most of the drawings that looked worthy of word marks had wordmark entries on TSDR.  This prompted the search

FD:20241220 AND LD:true NOT FM:*

that retrieves 609 TEAS applications filed last Friday that do not have wordmark entries on Trademark Search.  Per the table below, 23 of the first 25 trademarks (increasing serial number order) have wordmark entries on TSDR but not on Trademark Search. (I only checked the first 25 trademarks for that search.)


#
SN
Search WM
TSDR WM
1
98904955

POWERS'X
2
98911295

FEASTMATE
3
98911517

LOOPYDOO
4
98911546

H HERBALOGY
5
98912752

SANGA EATS
6
98913717

WINGED WOLF I…
7
98913792

MYY
8
98913992

TIJVZK
9
98913995

HOIFAANLONG
10
98913999

CAFE VIDA
11
98914005

HEOICYU
12
98914007

not recorded
13
98914008

HIIT WATER
14
98914009

REMIMPI
15
98914010

SUPREME FIRE S…
16
98914013

CW THE CUSTOM…
17
98914016

MODERN MADE
18
98914019

HEKBATSIU
19
98914024

not recorded
20
98914026

BLOEM
21
98914039

GUNGJOENG
22
98914042

DANNY JIA
23
98914043

GONGNAAMJYULOK
24
98914048

GOKZIJYUZAU
25
98914054

GOEKZAANG

While the wordmark entries on TSDR likely are the literal elements provided by in the raw applications that probably have NOT been reviewed by Pre-Exam, I still expected Trademark Search and TSDR would have matching wordmark entries.  After all, why would you expect the two systems to differ?

Yes, I've shared this wordmark inconsistency between TSDR and Trademark Search with the USPTO.  No, I have not researched how long these inconsistencies have been occurring.

Happy Trademarking,
Ken Boone

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/attachments/20241230/55a08df5/attachment.html>