[E-trademarks] Unicode Growing Pains - Recent Registration Certificate Examples Are Disappointing

[Carl Oppedahl]

Thank you Ken for posting.

I have several reactions to this.

First, Ken's postings in the past few months about character coding have 
prompted me personally to try to learn about Unicode. It is a 
fascinating world, this Unicode.  As time goes on, I must imagine that 
trademark offices around the world will eventually gain familiarity with 
Unicode.  The result, eventually, will be better ways of searching, and 
better ways of storing mark information for searching.  And better ways 
of receiving trademark applications in the first place, with applicants 
providing Unicode representations of marks rather than mere images of 
marks.

Second, Ken's postings have laid bare the many ways in which Trademark 
Center (and USPTO's other related internal systems for trademark 
application workflow) have failed to keep pace with Unicode.  Yes it is 
one thing if, within recent days, the USPTO coders belatedly started to 
check to see if the "mark" field in an application is or is not composed 
solely of "standard characters".  But it is clear the USPTO coders have 
not been checking to see if other fields (such as the "translation" 
field and mailing address) contain non-ASCII Unicode characters.

WIPO, as the administrator of the PCT, Madrid, and Hague systems, has 
historically served the IP community by nudging the world's intellectual 
property offices along towards current developments. There are many 
examples of this.  See for example the ST.26 standard for submission of 
computer-readable genetic sequence listings.  I have to imagine that our 
friends at WIPO are trying, as best they can, to think about Unicode.  
One of the challenges, of course, is that because of the way that Madrid 
Protocol is structured, nobody can file a Madrid application directly at 
the International Bureau.  (Direct filing at the IB is possible for PCT 
and Hague applications, but not for Madrid applications.) Instead, the 
only entry path for a Madrid application is a filing in one or another 
of the Offices of Origin.  OoOs surely differ greatly from one to the 
next as to the richness or paucity of the various data fields.  For all 
I know there may be some OoOs for which the filing path even now in 2025 
is in the nature of stone tablets with chiseled writing.

Some trademark offices are in places where non-Latin (non-ASCII) 
characters are very important.  Here you can see (WIPO web site 
<https://www.wipo.int/en/ipfactsandfigures/trademarks>) a ranking of the 
ten biggest users of the Madrid system:

 1. US
 2. Germany
 3. China
 4. France
 5. UK
 6. Switzerland
 7. Japan
 8. Italy
 9. Korea
10. Australia

China, Japan, and Korea show up in the top ten, and in each of those 
places, non-Latin (non-ASCII) characters are very important.  My sense 
is that Unicode by now supports most languages including Chinese 
(simplified and traditional), Japanese (katakana, hirigana, and kanji), 
and Korean (hangul).  Hopefully eventually the highest-volume trademark 
offices will get together to try to work out ways to make use of Unicode 
for filing of trademark applications, for searching, for publication, 
and for other workflow purposes. Hopefully eventually it would reach the 
point where a Madrid filing could contain a Unicode mark, and no matter 
which Office is designated, the IB could transmit the designation to the 
designated Office and that Office could actually know what to do with 
the Unicode characters.


On 4/15/2025 2:40 PM, Ken Boone via E-trademarks wrote:
> Following are 4 recent registrations with Unicode characters in the 
> translation/transliteration fields (as evident on the TSDR summary 
> tab).  In each case, the Registration Certificate simply dropped the 
> Unicode characters.
>
> Drawing
> 	
> SN
> 	
> RD
> 	
> Comment
> _previously viewed Image for 98496184, select for more details_
>
> 	
> 98496184
> 	
> 01/21/25
> 	
>  Translation:  The wording Benbo*奔博* has no meaning in a foreign 
> language.
>
> Reg. Cert.:    The wording Benbo has no meaning in a foreign language.
>
> _previously viewed Image for 98469783, select for more details_
>
> 	
> 98469783
> 	
> 04/08/25
> 	
>  Translation: The English translation of *雪冰* in the mark is SNOW ICE.
>
> Reg. Cert.:   The English translation of  in the mark is SNOW ICE.
>
> _previously viewed Image for 98384496, select for more details_
>
>
> 	
> 98384496
> 	
> 02/11/25
> 	
>  Translation:  The English translation of *金满庭* in the mark is Gold 
> Filled Palace.
>
> Reg. Cert.:  The English translation of  in the mark is Gold Filled 
> Palace.
>
> _previously viewed Image for 98018070, select for more details_
>
>
> 	
> 98018070
> 	
> 02/04/25
> 	
>  Translation:  The English translation of *瑞安房地產* in the mark is 
> auspicious; peaceful; real estate.
>
> Reg. Cert.:  The English translation of  in the mark is auspicious; 
> peaceful; real estate.
>
>
>
> Happy Unicoding!?!?!
> Ken Boone
>
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