[E-trademarks] ZWSP (was Standard Character Watch: 79409085 - A³-SHIELD - Now Scheduled For Publication!?!?)
Ken Boone
boondogles at hotmail.com
Thu Jul 10 22:17:39 UTC 2025
Thank you, Carl, for your comments. Congratulations on your research ... and learning something new. Yes, I would agree that the USPTO has opened the door for less-than-ideal actions by their examining attorneys. Below, I recommend the fix for this application and a few others that I considered challenging.
As it happens, I first mentioned 99181596 on Saturday, May 24th. I have copied that May 24th posting below Carl's posting below (yes, it's a rather long email trail, but I like to be complete), but here's the relevant information (from the PS at the end of that May 24th posting).
PS - Do you notice anything unusual about 99181596, the trademark OMMISIMQIST in standard characters. The search WD:( ** ) with that
[Image for 99181596, select for more details]
It's another case of counting the letters in the wordmark. It looks like there are only 11 characters in the wordmark, but there are actually 12. The final letter is the Unicode character with decimal value 8203, the zero-width space (rendered: ; HTML entity: ​ or ​ ), abbreviated ZWSP, is a non-printing character used in computerized typesetting to indicate where the word boundaries are, without actually displaying a visible space in the rendered text. The search WD:( ** ) with that zero-width space character between the two * wildcard operators retrieves only this OMMISIMQIST trademark. The similar search CM:( ** ) retrieves 6 live trademarks, including 2 registrations. Go figure.
I believe my analysis is consistent with Carl's comments. Admittedly, the sentence with the WD:( ** ) search was incomplete (oops!), but I gave away the search, and today the WD:( ** ) search still retrieves 99181596 (OMMISIMQIST). The alternative search CM:( ** ) retrieves 7 trademarks today, but I'm not too concerned about the ZWSP character occurring in fields other that the wordmark of standard character marks. Maybe I naive. That ZWSP explanation that I provided was copied from an Internet search, something like Unicode character with decimal value 8203.
As I recall, the USPTO believes that they own the wordmark field. By that, I mean that the USPTO feels free to modify the literal elements provided by the applicants to meet the needs of USPTO employees to do their work. Given that license, IMO the USPTO should perform OCR of the drawings provided in applications, compare the OCR results with the literal elements provided by the applicants, and perform sufficient edits to standardize the wordmark entries. For 99181596 (OMMISIMQIST), the ZWSP character is just noise and should be deleted from the wordmark entry, leaving only the standard characters that are clearly visible in the drawing. With that edit, the WD:( ** ) search will no longer retrieve this trademark.
As for the other challenging trademarks I mentioned ...
For 99188546 (PΜRE), the wordmark should be standardized to PµRE.
For 99255855 (ΜPERKER), the wordmark should be standardized to µPERKER.
For 99264134 (NEXABUILDER Ω), the standard character claim should be deleted, as Ω is not included in the standard character set. My fear here is that Pre-Exam will delete the Ω from the workmark and add a design code for that Greek character, but IMO that's rediculous. Keep the Ω in the wordmark for better searching, but add the appropriate Greek characters design code.
I'll leave the last two, namely
99265212
CAFÉ NAIROBI
[Image for 99265212, select for more details]
99271185
ÀKÓJỌPỌ̀
[Image for 99271185, select for more details]
for someone else to discuss. Besides, it will likely be several months before these applications are up for examination, plus other challenging standard character marks are likely to appear on Trademark Search.
Happy Trademarking!
Ken Boone
________________________________
From: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2025 2:24 PM
To: For trademark practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Subject: ZWSP (was Standard Character Watch: 79409085 - A³-SHIELD - Now Scheduled For Publication!?!?)
Aha! There's a chance I learned something from Ken today. See below.
On 7/10/2025 12:41 PM, Ken Boone via E-trademarks wrote:
[...]
Following are some recent additions to my challenging standard character mark watch list (where the reader gets to determine why I decided these standard character marks were challenging).
SN
Wordmark
Drawing
99181596
OMMISIMQIST
[Image for 99181596, select for more details]
Okay here is my guess as to why Ken deems this application number 99181596 to be "challenging". Prompted by Ken, I looked up that case in TSDR. I then went to the application-as-filed to copy the mark as filed.
On a quick glance one might assume that this mark contains eleven characters, starting with "O" and ending with "T". But the alert reader eventually catches on that there are not eleven but twelve characters in this mark. Yes, after the "T" there is a twelfth character. Maybe you can't see it, depending on what software you are using to view the drawing, but it is there.
I then pasted the mark into a string-to-hex converter<https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/ascii-to-hex.html> and it revealed the hexadecimal values of the characters:
4F 4D 4D 49 53 49 4D 51 49 53 54 200B
This tells us that there are indeed twelve characters. We recognize "4F" as the hex value for "O" and we recognize "54" as the hex value for "T". And we then turn our gaze over to the character after "T" (the character after "54"). The hexadecimal value is "200B". Clicking around on the Internet reveals this:
Unicode character U+200B represents a Zero Width Space (ZWSP). It is a non-printing character that does not take up any visible space on the rendered text. It's used in computer typesetting to indicate where word boundaries are, primarily for line breaking purposes in scripts that don't use explicit spacing.
So yes, for this application number 99181596 we have a twelve-character mark of which on a quick glance there might only have been eleven characters.
Clearly what absolutely must not happen is the Trademark Office sort of looking the other way and pretending that the mark has only eleven characters. What must not happen is the case getting published for opposition, and then going to registration, with only eleven characters appearing in the registration certificate.
There are many sad things here. A first sad thing is that clearly the Trademark Office people who coded the software in the Trademark Office systems failed to code it to flag this (presumably) nonstandard character for the Examining Attorney to pay attention to. It would have been trivially easy to do (for example a regular expression could have detected it). But no, this trivially easy thing did not get done. There is no hint or suggestion anywhere in TSDR that anything at all has been done to flag this situation for the Examining Attorney.
A second sad thing is that clearly the Trademark Office people who coded the software in the Trademark Office systems failed to code it to flag this (presumably) nonstandard character during the application process.
As we sit here as third-party observers, of course we do not know whether the applicant actively wants twelve characters in this application (including the ZWSP) or whether, perhaps, it was an inadvertent mistake on the part of the applicant.
But the ideal time to smoke this out would have been during the application process. Trademark Center ought to have flagged this to the filer. TC ought to have said something like "we have detected a character in your drawing that is not a standard character". And TC ought to have asked the filer to pick one path or another depending on what the filer actually intended for the drawing.
Again it would have been trivially easy to detect this (again, for example a regular expression could have detected it). But no, this trivially easy thing did not get done in the coding of TC.
I have of course loaded this application into IP Badger. The case was filed in May, so maybe it will get examined in around December. I will watch to see how the Examining Attorney handles this twelfth character in the drawing.
Having said all of this, I realize I may not have figured out why Ken calls this a "challenging" case. His reason for calling this a "challenging" case may be something else.
Carl
________________________________
From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf of Ken Boone via E-trademarks <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2025 12:15 PM
To: For trademark practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Ken Boone <boondogles at hotmail.com>
Subject: [E-trademarks] New Applications Assigned For Examination || Waiting Assignment For Examination
Repeating the searches that I performed one month ago, here are updated tables. The first table shows applications with the new application assigned to an examining attorney for examination status on TSDR. The second table shows applications with the new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney status on TSDR.
Search
3/24
4/24
Change
5/24
Change
SA:( "new application not assigned for examination" )
Total
13888
11612
-2276
11991
379
1 AND FD:[* TO 20201231]
2020
11
13
2
12
-1
1 AND FD:[20210101 TO 20211231]
2021
63
60
-3
60
0
1 AND FD:[20220101 TO 20221231]
2022
73
68
-5
69
1
1 AND FD:[20230101 TO 20231231]
2023
135
158
23
150
-8
1 AND FD:[20240101 TO 20241231]
2024
13309
10917
-2392
11114
197
1 AND FD:[20250101 TO *]
2025
297
396
99
586
190
Search
3/24
4/24
Change
5/24
Change
SA:("new application in the record" AND "not assignment to examin" )
Total
319191
312518
-6673
301033
-11485
1 AND FD:[* TO 20201231]
2020
202
201
-1
201
0
1 AND FD:[20210101 TO 20211231]
2021
4814
4809
-5
4805
-4
1 AND FD:[20220101 TO 20221231]
2022
6377
6378
1
6370
-8
1 AND FD:[20230101 TO 20231231]
2023
12342
12199
-143
12126
-73
1 AND FD:[20240101 TO 20241231]
2024
164329
106249
-58080
48496
-57753
1 AND FD:[20250101 TO *]
2025
131126
182680
51554
229032
46352
1 NOT FD:*
No FD
1
2
1
3
1
My simple conclusions:
There have been significant activity for calendar years 2024 and 2025 in the past two months.
There has NOT been significant activity for calendar years prior to 2024. More bluntly, older applications with the new application assigned to an examining attorney for examination status or the new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney status are mostly lost, forgotten and ignored. It is also odd that there are now 3 new applications with the new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney status that do NOT have filing dates, versus only 1 such application two months ago. Progress?
Happy holiday weekend,
Ken Boone
PS - Do you notice anything unusual about 99181596, the trademark OMMISIMQIST in standard characters. The search WD:( ** ) with that
[Image for 99181596, select for more details]
It's another case of counting the letters in the wordmark. It looks like there are only 11 characters in the wordmark, but there are actually 12. The final letter is the Unicode character with decimal value 8203, the zero-width space (rendered: ; HTML entity: ​ or ​ ), abbreviated ZWSP, is a non-printing character used in computerized typesetting to indicate where the word boundaries are, without actually displaying a visible space in the rendered text. The search WD:( ** ) with that zero-width space character between the two * wildcard operators retrieves only this OMMISIMQIST trademark. The similar search CM:( ** ) retrieves 6 live trademarks, including 2 registrations. Go figure.
________________________________
From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf of Ken Boone via E-trademarks <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2025 8:00 AM
To: E-Trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Ken Boone <boondogles at hotmail.com>
Subject: [E-trademarks] Applications That Aren't Being Processed, Some From As Far Back As 2022?
Pardon me for hijacking Pam's summary on yesterday's webinar, but I had some heartburn from her comment, "Ms. Cotton also talked about the fraudulent applications that aren't being processed, some from as far back as 2022." I'd say that's a bit of an understatement of the current situation. By my checks, the chaos goes back to 2020.
Recall that the search SA:("new application in the record" AND "not assignment to examin" ) appears to identify all live trademark applications with the new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney status on TSDR. (Since the SA field of Trademark Search is not displayed, this is my best guess for that retrieving all trademarks with that status.) That search currently shows 4,809 new applications with filing dates in calendar year 2021 and 201 new applications with filing dates in calendar year 2020 have the new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney status on TSDR.
The table below summarizes the new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney trademarks by calendar year on March 24th and today (April 24th). I'd summarize the progress towards resolving these older trademarks in the last month for calendar years 2020 through 2023 as minimal.
Search
3/24
4/24
Change
Total
SA:("new application in the record" AND "not assignment to examin" )
Total
319,191
312,518
-6,673
2020
1 AND FD:[* TO 20201231]
2020
202
201
-1
2021
1 AND FD:[20210101 TO 20211231]
2021
4,814
4,809
-5
2022
1 AND FD:[20220101 TO 20221231]
2022
6,377
6,378
1
2023
1 AND FD:[20230101 TO 20231231]
2023
12,342
12,199
-143
2024
1 AND FD:[20240101 TO 20241231]
2024
164,329
106,249
-58,080
2025
1 AND FD:[20250101 TO *]
2025
131,126
182,680
51,554
No FD
1 NOT FD:*
No FD
1
2
1
Here's a list of the 20 oldest new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney trademarks.
#
SN
FD
Wordmark
1
90202945
09/23/20
FAT ALBERT
2
90981101
09/23/20
3
90981207
09/24/20
INNOVATIVE CARE SOLUTIONS
4
90230047
10/01/20
CHUCKLECIDE
5
90230467
10/01/20
AFFAIRE BIKINIS
6
90230590
10/01/20
IGNITE
7
90230860
10/01/20
I.ANDROID.LIVE FREQUENCY BASED MUSIC
8
90231937
10/02/20
TMC TERRA METALS CORP.
9
90235170
10/05/20
M MYCHMAR
10
90235341
10/05/20
L..O. QUEINT DEFINED FASHION
11
90235429
10/05/20
MINDFUL LUNATIC
12
90235569
10/05/20
BOOKGASM
13
90237546
10/06/20
SPA BEAUTY
14
90238108
10/06/20
SPA BEAUTY NYC
15
90238486
10/06/20
NEW YORK PODIATRY GROUP
16
90239836
10/07/20
HEAVENLY VOICE GLOBAL MINISTRIES.
17
90239912
10/07/20
ENTREPRENEUR CONNECTIONS NETWORK
18
90240166
10/07/20
LET ME POP MY SPORTS ALL BETTORS NO SWEATERS.
19
90252700
10/13/20
DAVTON TRANSPORT LLC SO OTHERS MAY HAVE
20
90260718
10/16/20
THE ACADEMY OF SPORTS SCIENCE
On Monday, I did raise this concern in advance for the webinar. I've copied the email below. Mentioning my first name, they very briefly (a few seconds) addressed this concern just before the webinar concluded. They stated that they were aware of these older applications (blah blah), but they haven't resolved these older applications yet due to the huge backlog (blah blah). Well, that's what I heard, but I didn't have closed captioning turned on to capture the text. (Alternatively, the USPTO might have created a new suspicion of fraud status for these applications, but the backlog ...)
Additionally, the search SA:( "new application not assigned for examination" ) appears to retrieve all live trademarks with the new application assigned to an examining attorney for examination status on TSDR. (It would be nice if the SA field on Trademark Search was displayed so that guessing the appropriate search terms would not be necessary. Further, the SA field could use the exact same status text as TSDR.) That new application assigned to an examining attorney for examination status usually doesn't last too long, as that status changes as soon as the EA acts on the application. The table below summarizes the trademarks with that status for March 24th and today. (I'm thinking most of these applications for calendar years prior to 2024 are stagnant but frankly have lost interest in performing any further analyses. I recall earlier comments on this discussion group that these older applications are not evident on the EA dockets, that EAs don't even know that they're assigned these applications.)
Search
3/24
4/24
Change
Total
SA:( "new application not assigned for examination" )
Total
13,888
11,612
-2,276
2020
1 AND FD:[* TO 20201231]
2020
11
13
2
2021
1 AND FD:[20210101 TO 20211231]
2021
63
60
-3
2022
1 AND FD:[20220101 TO 20221231]
2022
73
68
-5
2023
1 AND FD:[20230101 TO 20231231]
2023
135
158
23
2024
1 AND FD:[20240101 TO 20241231]
2024
13,309
10,917
-2,392
2025
1 AND FD:[20250101 TO *]
2025
297
396
99
Finally, I was bewildered by this chart during the webinar. What does it say? I'm thinking they were trying to show progress in reducing pendency.
[cid:b972b4de-c15f-414e-8129-dfac85d94fae]
Happy Trademarking,
Ken Boone
________________________________
From: Ken Boone <boondogles at hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2025 5:07 PM
To: USPTOHour at uspto.gov <USPTOHour at uspto.gov>
Subject: Please Explain The Large Number Of Older Applications Awaiting Assignment To Examining Attorneys
On Trademark Search, the search SA:("new application in the record" AND "not assignment to examin" ) appears to identify all live trademark applications with the new application awaiting assignment to an examining attorney status on TSDR.
Today (4/21), that search retrieves 314,011 trademarks . That is, there are currently 314,011 live trademark applications awaiting assignment to an examining attorney for examination.
The table below shows the counts per calendar year of the filing date for that search for years 202 to present.
Search
Trademarks
Total
SA:("new application in the record" AND "not assignment to examin" )
314,011
2020
1 AND FD:[* TO 20201231]
201
2021
1 AND FD:[20210101 TO 20211231]
4,809
2022
1 AND FD:[20220101 TO 20221231]
6,380
2023
1 AND FD:[20230101 TO 20231231]
12,245
2024
1 AND FD:[20240101 TO 20241231]
113,655
2025
1 AND FD:[20250101 TO *]
176,719
No FD
1 NOT FD:*
2
The highlighting indicates my surprise. Case in point, I did not expect that 201 trademark applications filed in calendar year 2020 still have not been assigned to examining attorneys for examination. In the final row, there are two live applications without filing date entries that have yet to be assigned to an examining attorney for examination.
The USPTO currently states
We are currently examining new applications submitted between:
September 30, 2024 - October 14, 2024
so please explain how so many older applications filed prior to September 30, 2024 have yet to be assigned to examining attorneys for examination. Common sense dictates that except for a few Madrid applications received in the past 2 months or so with older filing dates that the USPTO honors, essentially all applications filed prior to September 30th of last year would have been assigned to examining attorneys for examination. The search
SA:("new application in the record" AND "not assignment to examin" ) AND FD:[* TO 20240929]
retrieves 29,328 trademark applications with filing dates prior to September 30th, clearly far more than a few Madrid applications received in the past 2 months with older filing dates.
Thank you for your attention to this concern.
Ken Boone
USPTO IT Specialist (Retired)
________________________________
From: E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf of Pamela Chestek via E-trademarks <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 5:51 PM
To: e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com>
Subject: Re: [E-trademarks] Petition to restore filing date
I attended a USPTO Hour this morning where fraudulent applications were discussed. Amy Cotton was abundantly clear that the fraudulent application should not be pursued, even though the applicant was innocently duped, and that the only thing that should be done is file a new application. I'm not familiar with the possibility of restoring or reassigning an application number to a different application, but based on what was said you're not going to get much sympathy.
It was an interesting session, where I learned more than I expected to learn. Off the top of my head, my takeaways were:
There are two major categories of fraud they're looking at right now:
Trademark mills, where US attorneys are signing applications prepared by others and not reviewing them;
The theft of attorney credentials, California attorneys in particular.
Ms. Cotton also talked about the fraudulent applications that aren't being processed, some from as far back as 2022. They are aware that these are causing hardship on other applicants because they are holding up later-filed applications. They had hoped to dispose of them by now, but had to other fires to put out:
An excess of fraudulent CAR filings
... and I forget the second one
But they are trying to get the fraudulent applications taken care of.
They are working towards role-based access to logins, that is, you will only be able to work on your own records.
They are working on automating the identification and processing of fraudulent applications. At the moment it is done manually. I have mixed feelings about this, mostly based on how it is implemented. I have long thought that the PTO didn't appear to be taking advantage of the machine data they have available for the identification of fraudulent applications, so I am optimistic that algorithmic identification could be more reliable than the current practices. However, I do worry that if a valid application is caught up (say you were on vacation in China and signed a few applications in rapid succession), your applications may get stuck in purgatory, or the algorithm is going to be less discerning than the manual process now used.
Pam
Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS
4641 Post St.
Unit 4316
El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
+1 919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal
www.chesteklegal.com<http://www.chesteklegal.com/>
On 4/23/2025 3:10 PM, Russell Nugent via E-trademarks wrote:
Dear Group,
A new client of mine filed an application through a third party freelance service. The freelancer they connected her with filed two trademark applications under the name of an attorney not affiliated with them. The USPTO found out the attorney of record had nothing to do with the filing and so issued a notice of incomplete trademark application and cancelled the application serial number. The remedy was to refile the application correctly and then file a petition to restore the serial number which was simply denied. Can anyone with any experience with this type of petition provide any guidance on how to approach the USPTO and whether proving she was scammed is reason to restore the original serial number?
Thanks in advance,
Russell D. Nugent
Comprising IP
1213 Culbreth Dr, Ste 112
Wilmington, NC 28405
nugent at comprisingip.com<mailto:nugent at comprisingip.com> (private)
910-550-3259 (private)
contact at comprisingip.com<mailto:contact at comprisingip.com>
910-509-7131
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