Category: Glossary

A section in the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) “Response to Office Action” form and “Request for Reconsideration after Final Action” form that requires the signature of a proper party. This section must be signed in order to submit a response in TEAS.  Only certain persons can sign the “Response Signature” section. If you have an attorney, the attorney must sign the response.  If you do not have an attorney, and you are an individual applicant, then you must sign (and date) the response yourself.  If you are a juristic applicant (e.g., corporation, partnership), then someone with legal authority to bind the juristic applicant must sign (e.g., a corporate officer or general partner) and date the form.  In the case of joint applicants, all joint applicants must sign.

a section in the Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) “Response to Office Action” form and “Request for Reconsideration after Final Action” form that requires the signature of a proper party. This section must be signed if you want to submit a declaration to verify a statement or assurance in your response.  For example, when you file a substitute specimen, the USPTO requires a declaration to verify or attest to the statement that the specimen was in use in commerce at least as early as the application filing date, prior to the amendment to allege use filing date, or prior to the expiration of the deadline for filing a statement of use.  If you want to submit a declaration, these TEAS online forms require two signatures – one in the “Declaration Signature” section and one in the “Response Signature” section.  For the definition of a “Response Signature,” please see elsewhere in this glossary.

Only certain persons can sign the “Declaration Signature” section in these TEAS forms.  If you are an individual applicant (that is, you are not a legally-organized business such as a partnership or corporation), the following are people who may sign your verified statement or assurances:  (1) you; (2) someone with firsthand knowledge of the facts and actual or implied authority to act on your behalf; or (3) your attorney, if you are represented by one, who must be authorized to practice before the USPTO.  If you are not an individual applicant, the following are people who are properly authorized to sign on your behalf:  (1) someone with legal authority to bind a juristic applicant (e.g., a corporate officer of a corporate applicant, or a general partner of a partnership applicant); (2) someone with firsthand knowledge of the facts and actual or implied authority to act on your behalf; or (3) your attorney, if you are represented by one, who must be authorized to practice before the USPTO.

eXtensible Markup Language – a subset of SGML, or standard generalized markup language; a structured language that facilitates the standardized representation of format and representation and organization of data in an automated environment, such as the use of a browser on a webpage.

In the 46 years prior to theGreat Fire of 1836, the United States government had issued about 10,000 patents. Most of these could never be revived again, but Congress acted to restore those records that could be reconstructed from private files and reproduce models which were deemed critical. Patents whose records were not restored were cancelled. There were a total of 2,845 patents restored, most of which were eventually given a number beginning with “X”. All patents after the date of the establishment of the Patent Office in July 1836 were numbered as a new series (without the X), beginning with a new Patent No. 1 to John Ruggles. A small number of the new series patents had been destroyed in the Great Fire but they were quickly recovered from their owners’ records. X files bear numbers that range from X000001 to X011280. X0000001 is the first patent, issued to Samuel Hopkins in 1790.

World Trade Organization

WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty

From Public PAIR/IFW – designates the point in time when an amendment is received in the Office and the paper scanning process may be started at the USPTO; does not indicate whether scanning has actually started.

The “flow of work”

Workflow diagrams are a formal way to identify procedural steps and the logic employed in a process used to complete a task or job. Workflow diagrams include each interim step and product(s); the direction of movement through the process (indicated by arrows); decision points, alternative processes and repeated steps, and dependencies (steps or processes that must be completed before, during or after completion of a particular step); and can include the estimated time required for each step, who performs or reviews each step, and resource requirements. Depending on the type of workflowdiagramming method used, the start and end points of each interim step may be listed separately or the entire process step can be indicated by a single notation.

A type of trademark comprised of text

a non-elected claim

“Withdrawn” is the status identifier that should be used for claims that were not elected (chosen by the applicant to remain under consideration) in response to a restriction requirement.

— see MPEP 803.01, 803.02 and 803.03

Further, an appellant (one who is appealing an examiner’s final rejection to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences) may withdraw some of the appealed claims, resulting in cancellation of the withdrawn claims

— see MPEP 1214.05