May 21, 2004

Trademark Daily XML Files - Weekly Status Report

The following is a status update for all inquiries.

Inquiries can be made to: Ed Johnson at Ed.Johnson@uspto.gov - (703) 306-2621 or Jazmin Rexrode at Jazmin.Rexrode@uspto.gov - (703) 306-2626 or sent to OEIP@uspto.gov.

*The format of the Weekly Status Report will appear as follows:
1. Each inquiry is given a USPTO Control # for tracking purposes.
2. The summary portion of “Status of Inquiries” will be “grouped” by the current status.
3. The detail portion of the report will be in sequence Control # (for easier reference).

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"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is processing paper Madrid filings within a week of receipt and electronic applications within hours. Information is generally viewable on the USPTO website within 24 hours of the completion of Trademark processing. In addition to the work done on Madrid filings at the USPTO, there is also processing at the International Bureau of WIPO. Thus, in certain circumstances pendency is influenced by any backlogs that might develop at WIPO."

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All Trademark Daily Files provided through the USPTO FTP environment were available on time the week ending 5/21/2004

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*The status on the availability of the 2003 Annual Trademark (Retrospective) files is as follows:

-The 2003 Trademark Retrospective Assignment/XML file is available for purchase through FTP or on CD-R.

2003 Trademark Retrospective Assignment XML File
2003 asgn.zip - 82,622,036 bytes
2003 asgn.xml - 744,114,826 bytes

433,507 assignment transactions through February 29, 2004.

-The 2003 Trademark Retrospective Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB)/XML file is available for purchase through FTP or on CD-R.

2003 Trademark Retrospective TTAB XML File
2003ttab.zip - 55,626,578 bytes
2003 ttab.xml - 788,006,699 bytes

176,507 TTAB transactions through February 29, 2004.

-The 2003 Trademark Retrospective Live/XML file is available for purchase on DVD-R. Note: Due to the size of this file it is on 1 DVD-R.

2003 Trademark Retrospective Live/XML File
2003live01.zip thru 2003live11.zip - 883,077,749 bytes
2003live01.xml thru 2003live11.xml - 17,356,993,923 bytes

1,631,694 active trademarks through March 12, 2004.

-The 2003 Trademark Retrospective Dead/XML file is available for purchase on DVD-R. Note: Due to the size of this file it is on 1 DVD-R.

2003 Trademark Retrospective Dead/XML File
2003dead01.zip thru 2003dead12.zip - 841,117,857 bytes
2003dead01.xml thru 2003ldead11.xml - 18,372,159,875 bytes

2,029,211 inactive trademarks through March 13, 2004.

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Status of Inquiries:

Closed:

05/21/2004: Control #47, #48, #49 and #50.

Open:

05/21/2004:

*Control #16 - The use of Country Codes, *Control #21 - The inclusion of 3 IB data fields and *Control #41 - US applications requesting International Registration Status continue to be evaluated along with providing status changes on a daily basis.

*Control #43 - The ISO-8859-1 Character Set being used in the Trademark 24 Hour Box versus the UTF-8 Character Set is being used in Daily Application file, The Daily Assignment file and the Daily TTAB file.

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Inquiries that have been resolved will have the resolution in black, bold, italicized and underlined.

Any inquiries that require additional research and/or response are considered outstanding inquiries and will appear in red, bold and italicized.

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Inquiry – 11/12/2003: (Control #16)

This inquiry was initially received 11/12/2003. A further clarification (as defined below) of the initially inquiry was received 03/02/2004.

There are fields available on TARR for an Application/Registration that has requested protection into a Madrid Protocol country that do no appear in the current DTD of the daily application file being disseminated. They are:

USPTO Control Number:
Original Filing Date with USPTO:
Date of Last Irregularity:

All other data fields included in the Madrid Protocol Information section on TARR are fields that appear in the current DTD of the daily application file being disseminated.

What we'd like is to have this information sent to us in the daily file being disseminated when the Application/Registration has been applied for and then updated with the additional Madrid related fields upon BIRTH from the IB.

A decision has been made by management that the Daily XML files will contain appropriate information that is present on TESS and TARR including the above 3 data fields. Software and documentation must be evaluated and updated. This effort will also analyze providing all status changes on a daily basis and the use of 2-position country codes – ISO Standard, ST-3 in all 3 daily DTD’s.

05/21/2004: The requirements document continues to be analyzes in an effort to determine cost and the amount of time to complete this new process.

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Inquiry – 6/06/2003: (Control #21)

In reviewing the country codes for each of the 3 XML files and discovered the following

*Trademark-Applications XML

Uses 3 digit code from TWTF file

*Trademark-Assignments XML

Uses no codes at all, they expand all codes (Spelling out countries)

*Trademark-Proceedings XML

Uses officially designated country as prescribed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standard ST.3

05/21/2004: This inquiry is included in the requirements being evaluated with Inquiry (Control #16 and Control #41)

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Inquiry – 04/12/2004: (Control #41)

There has 11,501 US applications requesting International Registration Status present on the Daily Application XML files identified below and they continue to appear on subsequent Daily Application XML files:

Date	Count	File
20040409	5180	apb040409.xml
20040410	2357	apb040410.xml
20040411	2130	apb040411.xml
20040412	1834	apb040412.xml

The USPTO TARR data base contains "Madrid Protocol Information" for each one of these applications.

The Daily Application XML file has identified XML tags/fields for this "Madrid Protocol Information". But these XML tags/fields are not populated with data.

The current XML tags/fields identified for Madrid Protocol International Information are to be populated for applications received from the International Bureau.

05/21/2004: This inquiry to also include Madrid Protocol Information being sent to the International Bureau is apart of the requirements being evaluated with Inquiry (Control #16 and Control #21)

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Inquiry – 03/14/2004: (Control #43)

The examples in Control #42 show where the ISO-8859-1 encoding is being used in the Trademark 24 Hour Box and UTF-8 encoding is being used in Daily Application file, The Daily Assignment file and the Daily TTAB file.

Please provide a table of the ISO-8859-1 encoding being used in the Trademark 24 Hour Box.

05/21/2004: Applicants filing electronic series “78” applications encode entity names from a large array of Unicode encoding located at: http://www.unicode.org/

Note: Because there is such a large array of entity names that can be used we are attempting to define a precise use of the above web site.

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Inquiry – 5/04/2004: (Control #47)

It appears that the previous 2.1 version of the DTD is being used in the 24 Hour Box for the daily file hr040503. Specifically for Serial Numbers 78256094, 78256142, 78256179 and 78267216. These applications have older filing dates and have never been received. They also appear in the daily application file apb040503 as “new applications”.

The following information was provided during testing that took place in October 2003:

NOTE: From November 2, 2003 through November 16, 2003 both TEAS Version 2.1 XML and TEAS Version 2.11 XML may appear in the 24 Hour Box files. After November 15, 2003 only TEAS Version 2.11 XML will appear in the 24 Hour Box Files.

05/21/2004: Version 2.1 of the DTD in the 24 Hour Box was used because the filing dates of these applications were prior to November 15, 2003.

Quality control efforts continue to be monitored and updated in an effort to make any necessary corrections to filed applications and process them in a very timely manner. Maintaining TEAS version 2.1 of the DTD for applications filed prior to November 15, 2003 and TEAS version 2.11 of the DTD for applications filed on or after November 2003 is advisable.

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Inquiry – 5/10/2004: (Control #48)

File Apb040507.zip: The Identification Mark field of Serial Number 78411999 contained invalid data (the international classification, the US Class, and Goods and Service text.

Also, this serial number only has one classification record for IC 01?

05/21/2004: This application was filed with many errors and has been returned to the applicant.

A mis-assigned serial number (Status Code 622) for 78411999 was filed 05/12/2004. This status change will appear in the Monthly Status File Tuesday, June 1, 2004.

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Inquiry – 5/18/2004: (Control #49)

Missing Trademark Assignment Data.

Reference Reel/Frame: 2160/0796
Received: 11/07/2000
Recorded: 10/19/2000

The above reel and frame on the USPTO assignment web site contains a total of 131 properties.

The trademark assignment file being disseminated to external customers and also to the internal Cassis Trademark Assignment DVD has this same reel and frame showing only 4 total properties (75451314, 75635363, 75671584 and 75731105). Note: These 4 properties are not included in the 131 identified above.

This trademark assignment reel and frame (2160/0796), with 131 properties, was present on the trademark assignment daily XML file dated August 3, 2003. It is also present on the 2003 Trademark Retrospective Assignment XML file.

Due to the fact that not everyone was using the daily XML files in August 2003 this trademark assignment reel and frame (2160/0796), with all 131 properties, will be present on the trademark assignment daily XML file dated May 21, 2004.

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Inquiry – 5/18/2004: (Control #50)

XML files fairly often fail to post because of internal errors at PTO. PTO will announce downtime, but the files will mysteriously still be available, and then a weekend will come by when the files fail to post, but no downtime was announced.

As a customer service policy, we inform all of our customers via e-mail of pre-arranged maintenance outages.

Sometimes a pre-arranged outage does not affect the servers used for the daily trademark XML files. System Managers inform us about the pre-arranged outages just in case those servers may be effected and we pass this information on to our customers. If none of the files are affected, then they are available for download (not mysteriously available.)

Also, we have staff "in the ready" on the weekends to ensure that any missing files are posted and available in case the servers were affected by an outage (the staff ensures the files are available).

When files have not been available and no pre-arranged maintenance was announced, it was due to an internal system problem. As soon as possible, we notify the customers and provide missing files.

Since the week ending April 16, 2004, we have tightened up these internal system problems and have not had any failures for over 1 month.

We are keeping a close check on any possible failures and providing status of timeliness in the Weekly Status Report.

Please let us know if there are any other concerns.

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If you have any questions or need additional information please contact one of the following individuals:

Ed Johnson	Jazmin Rexrode
Office of Electronic Information Products	Office of Electronic Information Products
(703) 306-2621	(703) 306-2626
(703) 306-2737 Fax	(703) 306-2737 Fax
Ed.Johnson@uspto.gov	Jazmin.Rexrode@uspto.gov