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

Thu Apr 17 06:14:41 UTC 2025

Well I've been outed ...

As for Unicode, it definitely supports all the major scripts and many many
smaller ones, and has for many years. And it has been implemented in
virtually all significant commercial software. But it seems that the USPTO
and other TM offices use custom software that has not implemented the
Unicode standard.

Anne
www.unicode.org

On Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:26 AM Pamela Chestek via E-trademarks <
e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com> wrote:

> As a fun factoid, Anne Gundelfinger, president of INTA many, many years
> ago, is the general counsel and vice president of the Unicode Consortium.
> Small world.
>
> Pam
>
> Pamela S. Chestek
> Chestek Legal
> PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS
> 4641 Post St.
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> Unit 4316
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/4641+Post+St.+%0D%0A++++++Unit+4316+%0D%0A++++++El+Dorado+Hills,+CA+95762?entry=gmail&source=g>
> +1 919-800-8033
> pamela at chesteklegal.com
> www.chesteklegal.com
>
> On 4/16/2025 2:00 AM, Carl Oppedahl via E-trademarks wrote:
>
> 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
>  *[image: 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.
>
>  *[image: 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.
>
>  *[image: 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.
>
>  *[image: 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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