[E-trademarks] Pre-Examination Unit wait time

Thu Oct 10 14:12:38 UTC 2024

>> Hi.  Does anyone have any insight into what’s going on at the Pre-Examination Unit, with a target 10-day wait time and a current (as of August) average 131-day wait time?

There's obvious answer, namely it's the natural consequence of such a huge backlog on new applications to process.  But I tried to dig a little deeper, first addressing the Madrid applications and then addressing non-Madrid applications.  For both cases, I first looked at missing GS entries.  Sorry, but I did NOT get to occurrences of the UNKNOWN mark drawing code, as I got too frustrated performing that missing GS text review.

1A - Madrid applications missing GS entries.

After a few trial searches, the search LD:true AND FD:[* TO 20240710] AND SN:79* NOT (GS:*) seemed to be a good starting point - only 9 trademarks to review.  Here's a brief summary of those 9 Madrid live filings over 3 months old without GS text entries on Trademark Search (decreasing serial number order).

#
SN
FiledDate
Date Received
Comment
1
79406020
2024-07-03
3-Oct-24
Received last week - no problem.
2
79406014
2024-06-17
3-Oct-24
Received last week - no problem.
3
79405680
2024-05-27
unavailable
Could not find application on TSDR. WTF?
4
79402974
2024-06-25
unavailable
Could not find application on TSDR. WTF?
5
79400319
2024-07-02
18-Jul-24
Well beyond the 7-day processing average. WTF?
6
79400048
2024-05-13
18-Jul-24
Well beyond the 7-day processing average. WTF?
7
79399924
2024-04-11
11-Jul-24
Well beyond the 7-day processing average. WTF?
8
79397585
2024-03-01
13-Jun-24
Well beyond the 7-day processing average. WTF?
9
79391532
2024-01-26
14-Mar-24
Well beyond the 7-day processing average. WTF?

For this first review, 7 of 9 trademarks would have processing failures.  I was particularly annoyed that I could not view the applications on TSDR for hits #3 and #4, but maybe those were temporary TSDR hiccups.  Moving on ...

1B - Non-Madrid applications missing GS entries.

The search LD:true AND FD:[* TO 20240410]   NOT (GS:* SN:(89* 79*) ) retrieves 23 live non-Madrid filings over 6 months old but having no GS text, ignoring the 89-series.  Here's my brief summary (in decreasing filing date order) of those 23 older live trademarks with no GS text.

#
SN
FiledDate
Comment
1
98337844
2024-01-01
Application withdrawn by USPTO before publication …
2
98274578
2023-11-16
Maybe no one has noticed the missing GS text?
3
98102700
2023-07-26
Some activity, but processing largely skipped for this application?
4
98975170
2023-07-12
Incomplete Divisional?
5
97874126
2023-04-05
Processing skipped for this application?
6
97978503
2023-01-23
Maybe no one has noticed the missing GS text?
7
97978567
2022-12-29
Processing skipped for this application?
8
97978808
2022-11-18
Processing skipped for this application?
9
97978301
2022-07-27
Some activity, but processing largely skipped for this application?
10
76720936
2021-11-23
Madrid converted to national application awaiting processing.
11
90981207
2020-09-24
Processing skipped for this application?
12
90981101
2020-09-23
Processing skipped for this application?
13
76720931
2017-09-20
Madrid converted to national application awaiting processing.
14
81337716
1984-10-15
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
15
81161075
1979-07-16
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
16
81148965
1979-05-15
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
17
81148938
1979-02-01
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
18
81144258
1978-06-08
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
19
81142298
1978-04-28
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
20
81209948
1978-01-01
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
21
81119026
1977-07-05
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
22
81068511
1976-05-13
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.
23
81029001
1973-08-02
Dead registration that appears as live on Trademark Search.

In summary, it looks like the USPTO has largely ignored most of these live tradmarks with no GS text.  (Also, note that we can only guess how the USPTO computes the Pre-Examination Unit wait time, but that calculation apparently does NOT include applications that may have been skipped by Pre-Exam.)

Well, these first two reviews were too frustrating to continue with the proposed reviews of older live trademarks with the UNKNOWN mark drawing code (since Pre-Exam determines the mark drawing code for new applications).  Maybe I'll perform that analysis later today.

Happy Trademarking,
Ken Boone

________________________________
From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf of Jessica R Murray via E-trademarks <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Sent: Monday, October 7, 2024 1:34 PM
To: 'e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com' <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Jessica R Murray <jrmurray at syr.edu>
Subject: [E-trademarks] Pre-Examination Unit wait time

Hi.  Does anyone have any insight into what’s going on at the Pre-Examination Unit, with a target 10-day wait time and a current (as of August) average 131-day wait time?

[A screenshot of a computer  Description automatically generated]

Thanks,

Jessica

Jessica R. Murray
(pronouns she/her/hers)
Director, Transactional Law Clinic
Associate Teaching Professor
Syracuse University College of Law

Zoom Link  https://syracuseuniversity.zoom.us/my/jessica.r.murray

T 315.443.4582  F 315.443.3636
jrmurray at syr.edu<mailto:jrmurray at syr.edu>

Dineen Hall, 950 Irving Ave., Syracuse, NY 13244
law.syr.edu

Syracuse University
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