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22 October 2018Trademarks

USPTO warns of unauthorised changes to trademarks

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has warned trademark owners that unauthorised changes have been made to a number of registrations and applications.

According to the office, the changes may have been made as part of a scheme to register other people’s trademarks on third-party “brand registries”.

“Unauthorised parties have filed forms through our Trademark Electronic Application System to make these changes,” the USPTO said in a statement on Friday, October 19.

“Although these instances affect a small percentage of total applications and registrations, we want to make sure our customers are aware of the problem as we work to solve it.”

As part of the scheme, the USPTO warned, trademark owners may receive an automated email from the USPTO alerting them of a request to change a registration or application, such as a change of primary email address.

The office said that this email message is generated immediately after the electronic form requesting to change the primary correspondence email address is submitted, although it may take up to 72 hours before the request is processed.

The USPTO said that if customers receive such an email, they should confirm with the USPTO whether they recognise the new email address and if the change has been authorised.

If it does appear to be unauthorised, customers should report it to the USPTO by forwarding the alert mail to TEAS@uspto.gov with a contact name and telephone number; application serial number and/or registration number of the marks affected by the change; and date and time of the alert message.

Customers should also send an explanation of the relationship between the receiver of the email and the mark’s applicant or registrant; and any other useful information.

The USPTO will then offer advice on the next steps once an email has been sent.

In addition, the USPTO advised its customers to create a MyUSPTO account and trademark docket.

The dockets send extra alerts to a designated email address whenever the status of an application or registration changes or if there is a change to certain prosecution history entries.

The USPTO concluded that some unexpected changes are made in good faith, while some could just be accidental.

This is not the first problem the USPTO has run into recently. As reported by WIPR, the office underwent emergency IT maintenance in August after its patent systems went offline.

According to the USPTO, the maintenance issues related to a problem with the agency’s PALM database, which supports the Electronic Filing System and Patent Application Information Retrieval System.

Patent filers who were inconvenienced by the outage were asked to file more forms if they required a refund.

The incident caused criticism from some lawyers, as WIPR previously reported.

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30 August 2018   The US Patent and Trademark Office has asked patent filers who were inconvenienced while the agency’s patent systems were offline to file more forms if they want a refund.
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20 August 2018   Patent lawyers have told WIPR that they have been left with costly alternative filing options after the US Patent and Trademark Office’s systems have been offline since Wednesday, August 15.