[E-trademarks] Trademark Center is broken
Carl Oppedahl
carl at oppedahl.com
Tue Apr 29 15:26:50 UTC 2025
Thank you TEAS person for your email. You report that a few minutes
ago, your development team corrected their earlier coding mistake that I
reported to you four days ago.
Unfortunately this work by your development team to correct their
earlier coding mistake came too late.
Your development team is irresponsible in the extreme for having placed
untested computer code into production service at least nine days ago
without having carried out simple acceptance testing on the code.
It was also irresponsible to foot-drag on admitting the defect (on the
System Status page) until merely yesterday (April 28). Your development
team knew about this defect at least as long ago as April 23, but did
not admit to it on the System Status page until five days later on April
28. Had your development team admitted to the defect promptly (many
days ago), then such a posting to the System Status page could have
saved many trademark filers from much grief and expense and potential
loss of substantive trademark rights.
Others had reported this defect to the USPTO before last Friday. But
last Friday was the day that I reported this problem to you at
TEAS at USPTO.GOV. I reported it at 8:42 AM Eastern Time as you may see
from the emails quoted below. There is no doubt that you received that
email, because I have the acceptance handshake from your email server
logged at that time. Yet even five hours later I had not heard back
from you. it was only after I escalated to a supervisor in the
Trademark Assistance Center, and only after she messaged your office,
that you belatedly responded to my report with your suggested workaround
of an ink signature. This was at 1:47 PM ET that day. Had your
response been prompt, there is a chance that my client in Europe could
have gotten the ink signature paperwork done that day. Your delay of
more than five hours in responding to my report guaranteed that the
entire weekend would be lost, due to the time zone difference between me
and my client in Europe.
I speak for a trademark practitioner community of over one thousand very
experienced trademark practitioners (the e-Trademarks listserv). The
membership of our listserv has, collectively, paid over ten million
dollars in government fees to the USPTO in the past year alone. What
should have happened is that your development team should have engaged
with our community prior to placing new and untested code into
production service. We could, for example, have beta-tested the
experimental code for your development team.
As I say, the work by your development team to correct their earlier
coding mistake came too late. In my case, the coding mistake cost me
many thousands of dollars' worth of my professional time on a group of
eight trademark filings, struggling with workarounds such as your
proposed shift to the use of an ink signature. It likewise cost my
client many thousands of Euros' worth of their time, struggling with the
coding mistake. Worse than the direct loss of money was the very grave
risk of loss of eight important priority claims under Article 4 of the
Paris Convention. We managed to get the eight ill-fated trademark
filings accomplished about three hours ago. But if the problem had
dragged on for just one more day, my client would have irrevocably lost
substantive trademark priority rights for eight trademarks. Of course it
is a welcome thing that your development team corrected their mistake a
few minutes ago. But that corrective work was too late to make any
difference for me or for my client.
I see your request that I now set up a new trademark application
submission to test the corrected code that was placed into service
within recent minutes. I look forward to your commitment that if I do a
new test filing for you, you will refund the otherwise unnecessary
government fee afterwards. With that commitment, I will be glad to do a
test filing for you to test the corrected code.
I propose that a videoconference be set up in the next few days to
review the learning opportunities from this group of USPTO failures.
Attendees to the videoconference should include:
* Someone from the office of the Acting Commissioner for Trademarks
(which office I contacted last Friday about this), and
* Someone from your Trademark Center development team, and
* Someone from TEAS at USPTO.GOV.
I can then bring along one or two members of our listserv community who
are personally familiar with this particular coding mistake, to join on
the videoconference. We can then discuss the various learning
opportunities from this group of failures, and hopefully we can identify
ways in which the USPTO and our trademark practitioner community can
work together to minimize such USPTO failures in the future.
I look forward to hearing back from you about this.
Carl Oppedahl
Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC
On 4/29/2025 8:16 AM, TEAS wrote:
> Request Esignature
>
> Good morning,
>
> Yesterday afternoon the development team resolved an issue where the
> E-signature page would not load correctly when both of the following
> conditions were met:
>
> * The owner entity was entered manually and not selected from a
> dropdown, and
> * The mark drawing type required an uploaded jpg image
>
> If this is applicable to your filing, could you please try again and
> let us know if you continue to encounter any further issues?
> Otherwise, please contact us for further troubleshooting and forward
> an E-signature request to TEAS at uspto.gov.
>
> Regards,
>
> TEAS Support Office
>
> United States Patent & Trademark Office
>
>
> *From:*TEAS <TEAS at USPTO.GOV>
> *Sent:* Friday, April 25, 2025 1:40 PM
> *To:* Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
> *Subject:* RE: Trademark Center is broken
>
> Good afternoon,
>
> Thank you for contacting the TEAS support mailbox regarding issues
> with Trademark Center.
>
> The referenced error is being caused by a bug in form. Our developers
> are currently working on a resolution. Unfortunately, we do not have a
> timeframe on when the issue will be resolved.
>
> In the meantime, please have your client close all open windows in
> their browser, clear their cache and cookie files *_for all time_* and
> log in at
> https://trademarkcenter.uspto.gov/initial-application/e-signature/review-and-sign?id=d16d0e4d-9236-4cc6-92cc-ae2920f06eec
> .
>
> If they encounter the same error, you may want to consider using the
> “Upload your signed declaration” option. Selecting this option and
> then clicking on the blue “Generate signature form” button will
> generate a PDF version of the declaration that can be downloaded and
> sent to the applicant for signature. Once you receive the signed
> document, return to the Declaration and signature page to complete the
> upload.
>
> Please send us another email if you have any technical questions about
> Trademark Center or the TEAS forms. For general Trademark information
> and questions, please contact the Trademark Assistance Center
> <https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/support-centers/trademark-assistance-center>
> at TrademarkAssistanceCenter at uspto.gov
> <mailto:TrademarkAssistanceCenter at uspto.gov> or telephone
> 1-800-786-9199 (select option #1). Telephone assistance is available
> Monday-Friday (except federal holidays) from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET.
>
> Regards,
>
> TEAS Support Work Staff
>
> United States Patent & Trademark Office
>
>
> *Subject: *
>
>
>
> Trademark Center is broken
>
> *Date: *
>
>
>
> Fri, 25 Apr 2025 06:42:45 -0600
>
> *From: *
>
>
>
> Carl Oppedahl <carl2 at oppedahl.com> <mailto:carl2 at oppedahl.com>
>
> *To: *
>
>
>
> TEAS <teas at uspto.gov> <mailto:teas at uspto.gov>
>
> I send this link to my client in Europe so that they can review and
> sign the trademark application. What happens next is really bad for
> my client.
>
> If anybody (the client, me, anybody) clicks on the link (the original
> link, from the TC email), it briefly jumps to the screen where the
> client might review and sign. But then, within a couple of seconds,
> the web site jumps to "https://trademarkcenter.uspto.gov/"
> <https://trademarkcenter.uspto.gov/>. this happens even if you do not
> have your hands anywhere near your keyboard or touch pad or mouse.
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>
> *Subject: *
>
>
>
> Trademark application XXXXXXX ready for review and signature - Docket
> number XXXXXXX
>
> *Date: *
>
>
>
> Thu, 24 Apr 2025 22:26:49 +0000
>
> *From: *
>
>
>
> TMOfficialNotices at uspto.gov
>
> *Reply-To: *
>
>
>
> TrademarkAssistanceCenter at uspto.gov
>
> *To: *
>
>
>
> carl2 at oppedahl.com
>
>
> United States Patent and Trademark Office
>
>
> Review and sign your trademark application
>
> You must forward the email to the person who will sign the
> application. By signing, they swear to the truth of the information in
> the application.
>
> *Mark:*
>
> Use this link by /*Monday June 23, 2025 at 18:26:48 ET*/ to review and
> sign your trademark
> application<https://trademarkcenter.uspto.gov/initial-application/e-signature/review-and-sign?id=d16d0e4d-9236-4cc6-92cc-ae2920f06eec>.
>
>
> Terms of Use <https://www.uspto.gov/terms-use-uspto-websites> |
> Privacy Policy <https://www.uspto.gov/privacy-policy> | Account FAQs
> <https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/account-faqs>
>
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