Ant-like persistence (@oppedahl.com) Bsky

What to make of the threats from AI that jeopardize software that we all rely upon? Recent news articles talk about instances where Anthropic’s Mythos AI is said to have found software flaws in pieces of software that have been around for a long time. The pieces of software…

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Happy World Quantum Day! I must confess I was not aware, until a few moments ago, that there was such a thing as a World Quantum Day. You can see the Wikipedia page about World Quantum Day. You can see a nice video with so…

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Two USPTO people need to be retrained, and I don’t know their names Two USPTO people need to be retrained, and I don’t know their names. I don’t even know how to reach the supervisor of either of those USPTO people. In the old days, I would just drop …

1 week ago 1 0 0 0

Using a trademark as a noun As any experienced trademark practitioner will tell you, it is a big mistake to use a trademark as a noun. Using a trademark as a noun (e.g., “Pass me a Kleenex”) instead of an adjecti…

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Sort of a Y2K problem with gasoline pumps Many long-time readers of this blog will recall the anxieties leading up to the year 2000. The worry was that some software systems, to squeeze more information into less memory, were storing only…

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Legrand has (maybe) restored its Eliot cloud to normal function It will be recalled (blog article) that Legrand had permitted its Eliot cloud to fall into disrepair. It appears that Legrand has restored its Eliot cloud to normal function.

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Dealing with fragile USB C “power delivery” charging ports Most readers of my blog will recall my blog article dated March 2, 2020 entitled Charging port redundancy. The article talked about how nice it is if a maker of a notebook computer would set it up…

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Recent tools added to the Section-101 toolbox For the patent practitioner who represents clients whose patent applications get rejected over Section 101, some new tools have recently been added to the practitioner’s toolbox that might he…

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Unacceptable USPTO delays in forwarding responses to Examiners We have a case in Technology Center 2100 in which we responded to a non-final Office Action on September 15, 2025. Normally such a response would have gotten forwarded to the Examiner (by the LIE) …

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Informed delivery now available for more business mailing addresses One of the places where our firm receives mail is a post office box. As recently as a couple of years ago, the USPS did not permit our firm to sign up for informed delivery with respect to our pos…

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Yet another round of sanctions for using AI-hallucinated case citations Here is a sanctions order in a patent litigation case in federal district court in Kansas. Several lawyers permitted their names to appear in a signature block of a brief. The brief contained a c…

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Rare Planetary Alignment on February 28, 2026 Hello dear readers. On and around February 28, there will be opportunities to see several planets in the sky. This will be shortly after sunset. The planets that will be easy to see are Venus, J…

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It’s time to get in your numbers for the 2025 toteboards Hello readers. It is now 2026 and this means it is time to get in your numbers for the 2025 toteboards: Fourteenth Annual US design patent toteboard Eleventh Annual US utility patent toteboard Sev…

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Over 3000 trademark registrations likely soon to be stricken from the Register The USPTO has issued a show-cause order dated January 27, 2026 which you can see here. The order has an Exhibit A listing 3361 trademark applications. The order sets a thirty-day period (ending o…

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Barnes & Noble cheats Nook customers For years I have hoped that Barnes & Noble would, through its Nook service, serve as a competent ebook competitor to Amazon’s Kindle service. My recent experience with Nook is a complete…

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Hundreds of emails lost due to Microsoft crash We all see in the news that earlier today (Thursday, January 22) Microsoft had some massive internal crash that affected lots of people who had selected Microsoft (aka Outlook) to handle their emai…

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Should the listserv member click on the link? Is it spearphishing? Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC (“OPLF”) sponsors many listservs (email discussion groups for intellectual property professionals), some with over a thousand members. In recent days, hun…

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USPTO’s Patent Center says: “There was an error” I was paying an Issue Fee in Patent Center, I clicked “submit”, and at right you can see what happened next. “There was an error”. That’s it. The developers of Patent…

3 months ago 1 0 0 0

Listservs seem to be back in service Hello listserv colleagues! I think the listservs are more or less back in service. But for about 30% of our listserv members, the member’s email service provider (ESP) is blocking our posti…

3 months ago 1 0 0 0

Maybe you have not used this kind of two-factor authentication for Patent Center? Day-to-day users of Patent Center are accustomed to the USPTO’s requirement that you provide two-factor authentication (“2FA”) as part of the login process. It turns out that you…

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USPTO backdates outgoing correspondence Today (Christmas Day, December 25, 2025) the USPTO for the first time emailed outgoing correspondence notifications (OCNs, shown at right) for three pieces of outgoing patent correspondence that ha…

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The listservs are broken The executive summary is: the listservs are broken. I am working on getting them back into service.

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Which commercial e-signature platforms does the USPTO recognize? On March 22, 2024 the USPTO published a Federal Register Notice saying that the USPTO would start accepting electronic signatures generated by some commercial e-signature platforms. You can see, a…

4 months ago 1 0 0 0

Learning to guess outcomes of appeals of 2d refusals Thanks to John L. Welch’s hundreds of blog articles about 2d refusals, I have gotten to the point where sometimes I can guess correctly the outcome of an ex parte appeal of a 2d refusal. The…

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Fifteen free-of-charge lectures about the Patent Cooperation Treaty The subject line says it all — starting on Tuesday, November 25, 2025, I will be presenting fifteen lectures about the PCT. Thanks to sponsorship from WIPO, these lectures will be free of ch…

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It only took 45 years — CNN over-the-top and unbundled CNN launched on June 1, 1980. Only now, 45 years later, has CNN become available “over-the-top” and unbundled.

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“ante-penultimate” Thanks to Brian E. Hanlon, Assistant Commissioner for Patents at the USPTO, I learned a new word today: antepenultimate. Assistant Commissioner Hanlon recently published a memo dated October 24, 20…

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Why all trademark practitioners need to know about BIMI Do you or your trademark client ever find that your outbound email to somebody ends up in their spam folder? Do you or your trademark client ever find that your outbound email to a recipient gets …

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Detecting and locating lightning strikes Loyal readers of this blog will recall (blog article) that I have constructed and have placed into service a station that detects a lightning strike and reports it to a crowd-sourced system that us…

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27 hours from now – USPTO discusses Section 101 27 hours from now, the USPTO will present a one-hour webinar discussing rejections under Section 101. For more information, or to register for the webinar, click here. Yes, we get 27 hours of adva…

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