[E-trademarks] three defects in Trademark Center

[Carl Oppedahl]

For a second time now I have attempted to use Trademark Center instead 
of the more usual TEAS for the preparation of a US trademark application.

For a second time, so far as I can see, Trademark Center is unusable.

For a second time, I have been forced to go back to TEAS.

Here are the three defects that blocked my ability to use Trademark 
Center today.

First, a false statement in the web-based system as to a requirement 
about actual use for a 44e filing basis:

    Identify goods and services for Section 44(e)
    You must be using the trademark in commerce for all the goods and
    services listed in your application.

I believe that it is false to say that in an application with a 44e 
filing basis, it is required that the applicant "be using the trademark 
in commerce for all the goods and services listed in your 
application."   Instead, the law requires nothing more than a /bona 
fide/ intention to use the trademark in commerce for all the goods and 
services listed in the application.

Second, when the time came to enter the details of the 44e filing basis, 
so far as I could see it is impossible to set forth that the filing 
basis is a registration /*granted by the European Union Intellectual 
Property Office*/.  So I was forced to go back to TEAS since TEAS does 
recognize EUIPO as a selection for the 44e office of earlier filing.

This is a sad repeat of a blunder made by the developers of Patent 
Center.  With Patent Center as released, it was impossible to claim 
priority from a prior application filed in EPO (or in any other regional 
patent office).  It was clear in the case of Patent Center that the 
developers stupidly just clicked around on the Internet for some list of 
"all of the countries in the world" and copied and pasted that list into 
the line of code that generated the drop-down list of would-be priority 
Offices.  Of course the developers of Patent Center, who promised that 
they were going to replicate all of the functions and features of 
EFS-Web, should have done a simple code review of that part of EFS-Web 
and would have seen that the drop-down list included some places /*that 
are not countries*/.  The European Patent Office is not a country.  But 
the developers of Patent Center had no clue that the EPO is not a 
country, or that a customer of the USPTO might need to claim priority 
from the EPO.

It took some weeks but eventually the developers of Patent Center paid 
attention to our bug report from the Patent Center listserv, and they 
fixed their mistake.

So here, too, what has apparently happened is the developers of 
Trademark Center stupidly just clicked around on the Internet for some 
list of "all of the countries in the world" and copied and pasted that 
list into the line of code that generates the drop-down list of would-be 
Offices for a 44e filing basis.   Of course the developers of Trademark 
Center, who represent to us that they are supposedly replicating all of 
the functions and features of TEAS, should have done a simple code 
review of that part of TEAS and would have seen that the drop-down list 
included some places /*that are not countries*/.  The European Union 
Intellectual Property Office is not a country.  But the developers of 
Trademark Center have no clue that the EUIPO is not a country, or that a 
customer of the USPTO might need to list EUIPO as a 44e filing office.

I did not trouble myself to go and look but I assume the developers of 
Trademark Center made the same blunder for the drop-down list of 
would-be 44d filing Offices.

The third defect in Trademark Center is the failure to provide all of 
the relevant entity types in the relevant drop-down list.

In TEAS, when we get to "the entity is a non-US entity", what happens 
next is that we get a drop-down list of non-US entity types.  On that 
drop-down list is, for example, "Société à responsabilité limitée" 
(initialized as "SARL").  The drop-down list has some seventy or so 
types of non-US entity.

In TEAS, we have been begging for years that the drop-down list for 
no-US entity types would have a first selection for the non-US country, 
and then based on this selection of country, we would /*subsequently 
*/be given a drop-down list of the entity types /*for that country*/.  I 
imagine now that Trademark Center is in front of us, we will never get 
this wish for TEAS because probably TEAS has one foot in the grave.

But I digress.

In Trademark Center, once the filer clicks to say that the entity type 
is a non-US entity, the drop-down list fails to provide "Société à 
responsabilité limitée".  The drop-down list also fails to provide about 
sixty-eight other types of non-US entity. Instead, the filer is forced 
to enter "Société à responsabilité limitée" into a free-form data field.

Of course the developers of Trademark Center, who represent to us that 
they are supposedly replicating all of the functions and features of 
TEAS, should have done a simple code review of that part of TEAS and 
would have seen that the drop-down list for non-US entity types included 
/*some seventy entity types.*/

Instead this particular defect in Trademark Center is going to lead to 
endless opportunities for random variations in the stated non-US entity 
type.  We will see filers who capitalize some letters and not others.  
We will see filers who enter the accent characters and others who do not 
enter the accent characters.  We will see filers who enter an acute 
accent as a grave accent and vice versa.  There will, henceforth, be no 
consistency at all in the entries for non-US entity types.

I invite comments from listserv members on these three defect reports.  
Maybe for each of the defects as reported, it is not really a defect 
because I missed some detail of Trademark Center. Maybe for one or more 
of the defects as reported, there is some workaround that I missed.

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