Tocups Law Office LLC

Registration is open at the USPTO for INVENTION-CON, August 10-12 (Virtual). See alert below for details. nmt

Women Entrepreneurs! USPTO is hosting a webinar on Wed. Sep. 29 from noon to 1:30 pm. Focus is Women Athletes. See attachment for details.

USPTO is sponsoring INVENTION-CON 2021.

A trademark case pending before the Supreme Court was brought to my attention by Dennis Crouch's Patently-O Daily Review. In this case, the subject is a PRODUCT DESIGN trademark. Did you know such birds existed? The product design is for the POCKY product marketed by Glico, a Japanese company. The product design is registered as Reg. No. 1,527,208. It describes the product as "an elongated rod comprising biscuit or the like, partially covered with chocolate." Lotte Int'l sells PEPERO original chocolate biscuit sticks. Glico sued Lotte, and lost in U.S. District Court as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. Both courts found POCKY's design to be functional. As noted, the case is pending before the Supreme Court: Ezaki Glico Kabushiki Kaisha v. Lotte International America Corp., Docket No. 20-1817 (Supreme Court 2021). We will see what comes of the battles over chocolate covered bread-sticks.

The 11 millionth U.S. patent issued yesterday, May 11, 2021. It's for a medical device and owned 4C Medical Technologies, Inc. Yes - that's a lot of patents. But I was surprised that an additional 6,560 patents yesterday as well bringing the latest US patent number to be 11,006,561. Wow.

Are you a micro-entity? If so, you may qualify for paying only ¼ as much in patent office fees as a large entity. For example, the USPTO filing fee for a Provisional for a "large" entity is $300 as of 4.3.2020, but only $75 for a micro-entity. There are a couple of ways to qualify for micro-entity status, but the one applicable to most people is having an annual income of less than about $180,000 (if you are close, good advice is to look up the exact amount) and NOT have more than 4 patents (or patent applications) (not including Provisionals) on file at the USPTO. Hurray!

Entrepreneurs! USPTO is offering a Trademarks Bootcamp. See attached info.

SQUISHMALLOWS™. Did you know these were a thing? The New York Times in its 3.17.21 email Evening Briefing reports that SQUISHMALLOWS™ have "exploded in popularity...." What do you know of these newest collectibles? nmt

Today is the second day of Women's History Month, and the birth date of Karen Carpenter. She would have been 71 today. I loved her music and mourned her passing at the young age of 33. This post may seem only tangential to intellectual property, but she was a musician with a beautiful voice. I only attached the photo of Karen after checking that it was in the public domain. But here's the attribution: White House photo by Knudsen, Robert L., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons