[E-trademarks] Trademark Center developers have corrected their fail! (Standard Character Watch - Z‧PILOT or Z·PILOT)

[Carl Oppedahl]

Here (TSDR 
<https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=99134995&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch>) 
is one of the dozens of pending cases at the USPTO that Ken flagged in 
his posting on May 7, 2025.  The mark is Z·PILOT, which at the time it 
was filed (April 14, 2025) contained a unicode "hyphenation point" 
between the Z and the PILOT.  This was a unicode hex 2027 character 
/*which is not a standard character. */

And yet the applicant, in the e-filing process on April 14, was able to 
get away with checking the box to say that it was supposedly a standard 
character mark.

I flagged this specific software fail in a followup posting to the 
listserv, following up on Ken's post.

This was a fail on the part of the developers of Trademark Center.  The 
software should have refused to permit the filer to get away with 
checking the "standard character" box given that the "hyphenation point" 
is not a standard character.  But on April 14, 2025 the Trademark Center 
software snoozed through it and did not notice that the filer was trying 
to use a character that is not a "standard character" as defined by 
<https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/standard-character-set> the Trademark 
Office.

Two things have happened some time after Ken flagged this issue:

  * in this particular case 99134995 the Trademark Office very quietly
    lurched back and forth and eventually got the character
    "standardized", and
  * the Trademark Office corrected its software fail, so that now
    Trademark Center will catch this kind of problem.

/*Quiet lurching back and forth. */The application got filed on April 
14.  Ken flagged the fail on May 7.

Then on August 22 (after Ken's posting and my followup posting) some 
nameless person at the Trademark Office mailed out a Notice of Design 
Search Code, saying:

    26.11.02 - Plain single line rectangles
    26.11.02 - Rectangles (single line)

The design search codes were, of course, absolutely nuts.  There are no 
rectangles anywhere in this mark, nor any "single lines". Completely 
nuts.  My guess is the nameless person selected these design search 
codes not because they made sense but specifically because they were 
nuts, as a way to force the Examiner to deal with it.

Then the case got assigned to an Examiner.  This was on September 9.  
And /*that same day*/ the Examiner phoned up the applicant's attorney, 
according to a "note to file", and "confirmed proper appearance of 
standard character mark with attorney and updated drawing".

And the Examiner changed the Unicode "hyphenation point" into a 
standard-character "middle dot".  This was on September 9.  This does 
straighten out the standard-character issue in this case.

Oh and the wacko crazy design search codes about single-line rectangles 
have gotten deleted from the case.  I am guessing that the Examiner was 
the one who cleaned that up.

And now it is September 16 and the Examiner has mailed out an Office 
Action on a separate issue, unrelated to this "standard character" 
stuff.  The case is moving forward.

/*Correcting software fail in Trademark Center. */As of April 14, 2025 
the Trademark Center software was defective and would fail to notice if 
a filer's proposed mark might happen to fail to be made completely of 
"standard characters".  But (I just today tested this in Trademark 
Center) if I were to try to file the same thing that the applicant filed 
on April 14, 2025, Trademark Center very correctly will puke on the 
proposed mark. It says:

    This entry must be in standard characters. ‧ is not part of
    thestandard character set
    <https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/standard-character-set>.

So some time between April 14 and today (September 16), the Trademark 
Office developers /*corrected the fail*/ in the software.

What I can tell you is that /*nobody from the Trademark Office*/ did me 
the courtesy of letting me know that the developers corrected their 
software fail.

My best guess is that /*nobody from the Trademark Office*/ did Ken the 
courtesy of letting him know that the developers corrected their 
software fail.

But the software did get corrected at the Trademark Office some time 
during those five months.  Now if a filer were to try to use a 
non-standard character, the software will puke on it as quoted above in red.



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