[E-trademarks] Standard Character Watch: Check Your USPTO Generated Standard Character Drawing!!!

Tue Apr 15 13:59:36 UTC 2025

Wow this is fascinating.  In the application as originally filed 
(yesterday!) the mark appeared as:

The character that the applicant filed is Unicode 2027 which is also 
called "hyphenation point".  (That is 2027 in hexadecimal. If you 
express it as a decimal number you get Kevin's 8231.)

Today the TSDR engine renders the drawing as:

Oh by the way if you ever have a character and you wonder which Unicode 
character it is, one way to find out is this web site 
<https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html>.

There are several paths for a trademark application to get into USPTO's 
systems:

  * paper filing
  * Madrid designation to the US (79 series code)
  * Trademark Center (child of TEAS)

In the old days of paper filing, these problems like mishandling of 
Unicode characters simply were unable to arise.  Somebody at the USPTO 
would be hand-keying the drawing into a USPTO system and the software 
used by the USPTO person simply did not permit keying in anything other 
than ASCII.

Knowing what I have seen of cases where USPTO systems have botched the 
handling of Madrid cases, I'd guess the USPTO's coders have in the past 
not paid anywhere near to enough attention to stuff like (non-ASCII) 
Unicode characters that might slip in from the Madrid system.

Then for some years the path 3 was TEAS and it did whatever it did about 
Unicode.  But that is in the past now.  Now we have TC. And over the 
course of many months there have been  instances where it appears that 
the coders at USPTO who coded Trademark Center dropped the ball on 
Unicode.  It simply should not happen that the TC software permits these 
two things to happen in the same single trademark application:

  * the filer gets away with claiming "standard characters", and
  * the filer includes a non-standard character in the mark.

There should be no way to enter a character that is not a standard 
character into TC and get away with calling the mark a 
standard-character mark.

So I tried this same filing today.  I went into TC and I did what I 
imagine are the exact same things that Nitin Kaushik (the attorney in 
yesterday's case) did yesterday.

And I pasted "Z‧PILOT" into the box for "what is my trademark". And TC 
caught it!  Here is what TC said:

This is today, April 15.  I was not able to use U+2027 in TC while 
calling it a standard character.  And yet yesterday, April 14, Nitin 
Kaushik was able to use U+2027 in TC while calling it a standard character.

Kevin wrote:

    In any case, I'm guessing everyone on this E-trademark discussion
    group will be more thoroughly double checking the USPTO generated
    standard character drawings before submitting their standard
    character marks.

But my experiment that I carried out today suggests that there is no 
need for such double checking.  There was, apparently, a need for such 
double checking yesterday, but not today.

I wonder if the coding of TC changed between yesterday and today?

Carl

On 4/15/2025 6:59 AM, Ken Boone via E-trademarks wrote:
> I happened to notice a new standard character application, namely 
> 99134995 - Z‧Pilot - filed April 14, 2025 at 4:58:56 AM ET according 
> to the raw application on TSDR (highlighting mine). Looks pretty 
> common, right?  Well, consider the drawing.
>
>
> Yes, the second character ‧ is a little bit special.  By my check, ‧ 
> is the Unicode character with decimal value 8231.  The USPTO's 
> standard character set only consists of characters with decimal values 
> ranging from 32 to 382.  So, the current electronic application system 
> accepted ‧ as a standard character but generated a box instead of a 
> raised dot for the official standard character drawing?
>
> It's been a while since I have /tested/ the USPTO's electronic 
> application system.  Does it still present a graphic of the standard 
> character drawing for the applicant to review? Did this applicant 
> simply ignore that option to review the drawing generated by the USPTO 
> for the wordmark provided for this standard character mark?  Will the 
> applicant have the option of amending the mark, converting the ‧ 
> character with decimal value 8231 to the standard character *·* (the 
> */middle dot, centered dot/* character with decimal value 183) and 
> have the electronic application system generate a more appropriate 
> official drawing, or would that constitute a material alteration of 
> the mark?
>
> In any case, I'm guessing everyone on this E-trademark discussion 
> group will be more thoroughly double checking the USPTO generated 
> standard character drawings before submitting their standard character 
> marks.
>
> From the raw application on TSDR.
>
> Trademark/service mark application, Principal Register
> Serial number: 99134995
> Mark: Z‧Pilot
> Mark format: Standard character
> Filing date: April 14, 2025 at 4:58:56 AM ET
> Docket number:
> Owner name: Shenzhen Sipaili Technology Co., Ltd
> Amount paid: $350 (1 class)
> Trademark details
> Mark
> Z‧PILOT
> Mark Format
> Standard character
> The mark consists of standard characters, without claim to any 
> particular font style, size, or color.
>
>
>
> Happy Standard Character Marking!?!?!
> Ken Boone
>
> PS - You probably didn't notice, but there's a new Madrid application 
> *without a filing date*.  Well, it is not all that new, as it was 
> received at the USPTO on Nov. 16, 2023 (according to the mail/create 
> date for the application on TSDR).  Additionally, it has neither a 
> wordmark nor any GS text on Trademark Search/TSDR.  And how did it get 
> the 1 - TYPESET WORD(S) /LETTER(S) /NUMBER(S) mark drawing code unless 
> Pre-Exam did their initial processing, except how could Pre-Exam then 
> ignore the missing wordmark, GS entry, etc.? Well, there is a Note to 
> the file stating */Per the 4/11/2024 correction notice Correction to 
> the initial EOP limitation has been entered/*, so apparently both the 
> USPTO and the IB are a little confused about this application that is 
> still awaiting assignment to an examining attorney.  So it goes.
>
>
>
>
>
>             Trademark image
>
> Generated on:     This page was generated by TSDR on 2025-04-08 
> 06:56:36 EDT
> Mark:       
> Trademark image
> US Serial Number: *79383109    *Application Filing Date:      
> Register:   Principal
>
> Status:     New application awaiting assignment to an examining 
> attorney. See current trademark processing wait times for more 
> information.
> Status Date:      Nov. 16, 2023
> Mark Information
> Mark Literal Elements:  None
> Standard Character Claim:     *Yes. The mark consists of standard 
> characters without claim to any particular font style, size, or color.*
> Mark Drawing Type:      1 - TYPESET WORD(S) /LETTER(S) /NUMBER(S)
>
>
>
>
>
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