[E-trademarks] Some Quality Control Checks/Suggestions Using Trademark Search
Ken Boone
boondogles at hotmail.com
Sat Feb 22 19:53:35 UTC 2025
>> ... I would have thought that somebody in management would have caught on years ago that this needs to get paid attention to. ...
Carl's comments remind me of a brief period in the 2000s when I was acting manager of the trademark search systems (TESS for external customers and X-Search for internal users). Suddenly, I was given access to multiple internal reports that were automatically generated weekly. (Yes, USPTO management has multiple system audit reports generated regularly, though I'm not aware of the specifics of those reports, as management does not share those reports.) One such report was a mismatch report between TRAM (the status side of TSDR, not the documents side of TSDR) and X-search. That report was generated on Tuesdays. Can you guess what I saw? Take a minute to think about it.
If you guessed that one of the categories of mismatches was registrations on TRAM that did not appear on X-Search, you guessed correctly. Literally, just after midnight on Monday nights, an automated task loads the new registrations for that Tuesday to TRAM, but since the X-Search update for Tuesday began hours earlier, those thousands of new registrations did not get loaded to X-Search until the Wednesday morning update, so every registration number issued that Tuesday was flagged as missing from X-Search in that weekly report, making that section of the report essentially useless. Fairly promptly, I requested that report to be generated on Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday morning. As you likely guessed, that promptly reduced the count of registration mismatches between TRAM and X-Search, typically to at most single digits, allowing me to research those mismatches and work towards having them corrected before the next report.
When the new manager for my section was selected (and took over management of TESS and X-Search), that new manager took exception to my revision of that report and ordered it to be returned to Tuesday morning. Once again, that weekly report returned to generating thousands of registration number mismatches between TRAM and X-Search every Tuesday. Apparently, management preferred the large number of registration number mismatches (that were mostly just the new registrations issued that week) in that weekly report. Go figure.
Here's today's update to my QC report (except I don't bother sharing weekend updates with the USPTO). I had to correct a few of the searches since the results didn't match my master list of irregularities. Specifically, searches 3 & 4 were returning some false hits, namely a few Madrid applications received at the USPTO after July 9th were appearing as problem trademarks. I noticed those errors yesterday afternoon. This morning, multiple corrections were noted for the 7th search, including SN 88629495, except that wordmark did include an accurate occurrence of the ? (question mark character), so I had to manually exclude that record from today's results.
#
QC Search
Today
Previously
Change
1
SN:( /<79000000-79399439>/ ) AND MD:unknown AND LD:true 456 457 -1
2
FD:[* TO 20240708] AND MD:unknown AND LD:true NOT (SN:79* SN:89* ) 41 66 -25
3
( SN:( /<79000000-79399439>/ ) OR (FD:[* TO 20240708] NOT SN:79*) ) AND LD:true NOT ON:* 8 8 0
4
( SN:( /<79000000-79399439>/ ) OR (FD:[* TO 20240708] NOT SN:79* ) ) AND LD:true NOT (GS:* SN:89*) 11 12 -1
5
LD:true NOT FD:* COMMENT:"Live But No Filing Date - 98305614 97977848 97977833" 4 4 0
6
LR:true NOT LD:true Comment:"Live Registrations But Actually Dead" 20 20 0
7
SN:( 75722562 79090344 79099220 79105611 79107274 79294728 79294737 79310411 79331990 79336276 79366512 79384354 79391101 85333307 86500939 88128956 88629495 90444281 90555410 90979979 97667505 97728652 97975969 98176859 98975063 ) AND LD:true AND WD:( /.*\?.*/ ) NOT SN:( 88629495 )
13 25 -12
8
LD:true AND MD:(*1* *3* *4* *5* ) NOT ( WD:* FM:* ) COM:"Missing Wordmark"
98
98
0
9
DC:( 030116 ) AND DD:( "heads of cats" ) AND LD:true
5
5
0
10
LD:true AND MD:*1* AND FD:[20031102 TO *] COM:"New Typed Drawings???"
2
2
0
11
WD:( *²* *³* *•* *¹* *¼* *½* *¾* *™* *¦* *¯* *†* *‡* *ˆ*) AND LD:true AND MD:(TYPED STANDARD)
20
20
0
Happy Trademarking,
Ken Boone
________________________________
From: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2025 11:18 AM
To: For trademark practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Subject: Re: [E-trademarks] Fw: Some Quality Control Checks/Suggestions Using Trademark Search
Thank you Ken for posting. Several things about this situation at the Trademark Office sadden me.
* A first thing is, this is the sort of thing computers are supposed to be good at. Yes, if some suggested change at the Trademark Office were to call for hiring new staff, I could imagine management doing foot-dragging. But somebody at the Trademark Office could just set this up as a cron job and it could generate the report periodically in an automatic way. Indeed I bet in a couple of hours I could craft some PHP script that would do this in an automatic recurring way.
* A second thing is, why does it need external inputs for this to get addressed at the Trademark Office. I would have thought that somebody in management would have caught on years ago that this needs to get paid attention to. Every one of these cases, when it does finally reach the desk of an EA, will make lots of extra work for that EA (assuming the EA is alert enough to pay attention). And in the (sorry, might happen) category of an EA failing to notice the problem, the result might well be a grant of a registration with mistakes in it.
* A third thing is, any time an EA examines a newly filed case, the examination necessarily requires a search of Office records. But each of these cases has defects that might lead to its failing to turn up in a search of Office records, depending on what is being searched for. This, too, can lead to cases getting registered that ought never to have gotten registered.
I think probably anybody who looks at this situation would likely be sad for the same three reasons. I realize I am just stating the obvious here.
On 2/21/2025 10:00 AM, Ken Boone via E-trademarks wrote:
Today's report. (The new QC search may look familiar. Yes, I intentionally omitted the new БЪЛГАРИКА standard character mark.)
________________________________
From: Ken Boone <boondogles at hotmail.com><mailto:boondogles at hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2025 10:55 AM
To: TMFeedback <tmfeedback at uspto.gov><mailto:tmfeedback at uspto.gov>
Subject: Some Quality Control Checks/Suggestions Using Trademark Search
Only the 10th search (typed drawings in the standard character era) shows significant progress since yesterday.
#
QC Search
Today
Originally
Change
1
SN:( /<79000000-79399439>/ ) AND MD:unknown AND LD:true
457
449
8
2
FD:[* TO 20240708] AND MD:unknown AND LD:true NOT (SN:79* SN:89* )
66
79
-13
3
(SN:( /<79000000-79399439>/ ) OR (FD:[* TO 20240708])) AND LD:true NOT ON:*
19
21
-2
4
(SN:( /<79000000-79399439>/ ) OR (FD:[* TO 20240708])) AND LD:true NOT (GS:* SN:89*)
23
24
-1
5
LD:true NOT FD:* COMMENT:"Live But No Filing Date - 98305614 97977848 97977833"
4
3
1
6
LR:true NOT LD:true Comment:"Live Registrations But Actually Dead"
20
20
0
7
SN:( 75722562 79090344 79099220 79105611 79107274 79294728 79294737 79310411 79331990 79336276 79366512 79384354 79391101 85333307 86500939 88128956 88629495 90444281 90555410 90979979 97667505 97728652 97975969 98176859 98975063 ) AND LD:true AND WD:*?*
25
25
0
8
LD:true AND MD:(*1* *3* *4* *5* ) NOT ( WD:* FM:* ) COM:"Missing Wordmark"
98
99
-1
9
DC:( 030116 ) AND DD:( "heads of cats" ) AND LD:true
5
5
0
10
LD:true AND MD:*1* AND FD:[20031102 TO *] COM:"New Typed Drawings???"
2
17
-15
11
WD:( *²* *³* *•* *¹* *¼* *½* *¾* *™* *¦* *¯* *†* *‡* *ˆ*) AND LD:true AND MD:(TYPED STANDARD)
20
20
0
The new search (#11) identifies 20 live typed drawing or standard character marks with unexpected characters occurring in the wordmark entries. (Yes, I'm sure there are more irregularities among the live standard character marks - that this QC search is incomplete and can be improved.) For your convenience, here is a list of those 20 typed drawings or standard character mark with unexpected characters in the wordmark entries.
#
SN
FD
Wordmark
1
79166932
09/30/14
®
PRESTA²
2
79235429
02/15/18
®
SEC³URE
3
79264585
03/04/19
®
STORE¯CHAIN
4
88751137
01/08/20
®
NB² NOTHING BUT BOURBON
5
79285188
01/30/20
®
VESTAMID E²X
6
79288581
01/30/20
®
E²X
7
79292893
07/03/20
®
P³ PULSE
8
79300503
11/11/20
®
CHAMP²
9
90515424
02/06/21
®
PERK²O
10
79309572
02/08/21
®
X²
11
90865200
08/04/21
®
CURIO NO¯MERY
12
97786933
02/08/23
®
KASTRA ELI?¯N
13
79366806
02/23/23
®
SB²
14
79366809
02/23/23
®
ULTRA-SB²
15
79386509
09/05/23
E²
16
79388132
12/19/23
BELIGHT³
17
79409085
01/19/24
A³-SHIELD
18
79400216
05/23/24
EI²
19
79401538
05/23/24
EMPOWERED INTELLIGENCE ²
20
79416052
11/28/24
PIËCH DUAL²DRIVE
You likely noticed that Madrid applications dominate this list. Perhaps the software for Madrid applications could use further enhancements to check that all characters occurring in standard character marks comply with USPTO's standards for standard character marks?
Most of these trademarks have either the superscript ² or ³ characters in the wordmark, but those characters are NOT included on the USPTO's standard character list (https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/standard-character-set), plus section 807.04(b) When Special Form Drawing Is Required of the TMEP states:
A special form drawing is required for marks that contain superscripts, subscripts, exponents, or other characters that are not in the USPTO’s standard character set. In re AFG Indus. Inc., 17 USPQ2d 1162, 1164 (TTAB 1990) (requiring special form drawing for raised numeral). See TMEP §807.03(b)<https://tmep.uspto.gov/RDMS/TMEP/current#/current/TMEP-800d1e1215.html> regarding the USPTO’s standard character set.
Sadly, for the occurrences of the superscript ² or ³ characters in the wordmark, many of the trademarks are already registered. I'm guessing that complicates removal of the standard character claim and using the STYLIZED TEXT mark drawing code for these trademarks? Maybe a Public Note could be added to TSDR for these registrations to admit that the standard characters claim was included in these registrations in error?
For #3, STORE¯CHAIN, the ¯ character is not included in the standard character list, but this trademark is registered, so maybe again a Public Note could be added to TSDR for these registrations to admit that the standard characters claim was included in these registrations in error?
For #11, CURIO NO¯MERY, the drawing shows Curio Nōmery, where ō is the standard character with decimal value 333 and is described as omacr - latin small letter o with macron. Now that TRAM/TSDR can handle characters with decimal values over 255, I recommend manually correcting the wordmark to CURIO NŌMERY ASAP!
For #12, KASTRA ELI?¯N, the ?¯ sequence is particularly annoying (the unexpected ? and the ¯ invalid character for a standard character mark. The drawing shows KĀSTRA ELIŌN and I recommend manually correcting the wordmark to KĀSTRA ELIŌN as TRAM/TSDR can now handle characters with decimal values over 255.
For #15 thru #20 with superscript ² or ³ characters in the wordmark entries, I recommend cancelling the standard character claims and converting the trademarks to stylized text ASAP to prevent these trademarks from becoming registrations with the standard character claim.
Hope this helps,
Ken Boone
USPTO IT Specialist (retired)
________________________________
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/attachments/20250222/e2fabf5c/attachment.html>
More information about the E-trademarks
mailing list