For trademark lawyers: Working from home? Here are links to great trademark resources

A list of some of the Top trademark resources online, presented in no particular order:

• TSDR – for viewing status, details, documents, history, and more for any USPTO application or registration. More details here.
• TESS – Trademark Electronic Search System, for searching USPTO trademark records
• TTABvue – for looking up status and records in Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cases
• sofTMware® – free tool provided by Erik M Pelton & Associates for tracking and monitoring the status of USPTO trademark applications and registrations. The sofTMware® tool can be used to monitor a single application or registration – or hundreds of them. It can be used with your own records, or those owned by others..
• TTABlog® – the latest in Trademark Trial and Appeal Board case law, with a very useful “search” function
• TMView – great tool for some international searching
• TMEP (Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure) – all the core trademark application rules, procedure and law in one place
• Google – for finding just about anything
• Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) – for trademark application filings, responses, and registration renewals
• Trademark Fee Information – USPTO fee details
• USPTO trademark ID Manual – the description of goods and/or services is a vital part of any trademark filings
• Create a PDF with up to 25 USPTO trademark registration certificates at once http://tmportal.uspto.gov/external/portal/registrationcert
• TTAB Manual of Procedure –  all the TTAB rules and procedure
• Design Code Manual and information – for searching images at the USPTO
• WIPO Madrid international trademark filing system main page – for checking international filing fees, member countries, and more
• Internet Archive – for researching the history of most websites
• DomainTools – for researching WHOIS and other domain information
• TESS Help Menu – detailed information about boolean and other searches, and search fields, for the USPTO trademark database
• Is This A Trademark Scam? – beware of scams

More detailed USPTO links:

• Trademark Electronic Search Systems (TESS)
  • TESS tips
  • TESS News including the dates of the most recent data in the databaes
  • TESS Help Menu including information about all of the field codes
  • Design search code manual

• Essential trademark tools
  • Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure (TMEP)
  • Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS)
  • Trademark Applications and Registrations Retreival (TARR) – easiest way to view status and details when you have the application or registration number
  • TSDR – retrieve application documents, status, and more
  • ID Manual

• Assignments
  • Trademark Assignments search
  • File Trademark Assignments

• Main TTAB page
  • TTABvue search TTAB cases and view documents
  • Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Manual of Procedure (TBMP)
  • USPTO e-FOIA TTAB Reading Room featuring TTAB decisions
  • list the last 30 days of decisions from the TTAB

• Contact information
  • USPTO contact page
  • Contact Trademarks page (contains many department and support email addresses)
  • Employee phone number lookup
  • Alphabetical List of USPTO organizations (with contact info)

• Trademark Information Network (videos)
• Subscription center (for USPTO newsletters and other subscriptions)
• List of trademark fees
• Official Gazette for Trademarks
• Trademark News & Notices: recent postings
• TPAC meetings schedule and agendas
• Retrieve USPTO registration certificates – print or PDF up to 25 registration certificates at a time
• USPTO System Status and Availability – stay abreast of current or planned computer outages
• RECORD TRADEMARKS WITH CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION (CBP) http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/notices/tmrecorduscustoms.jsp
• OFFICE OF POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS – TRADEMARKS http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/trademarks/index.jsp
• OFFICE OF ENROLLMENT AND DISCIPLINE (OED) http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/oed/index.jsp
• OFFICE OF THE SOLICITOR – FEDERAL CIRCUIT APPEALS http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/solicitor/fedcirappeals.jsp
• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TRAINING PROGRAMS AND CONFERENCES http://www.uspto.gov/ip/events/index.jsp
• THE GLOBAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ACADEMY http://www.uspto.gov/ip/training/index.jsp
• OFFICE OF POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS – PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR) OVERSEAS http://www.uspto.gov/ip/iprtoolkits.jsp
• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR) ATTACHÉ PROGRAM http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/attache/index.jsp
• MADRID PROTOCOL INFORMATION: http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/law/madrid/index.jsp
• Geographical Indications http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/geographical/index.jsp

Kids at home too? USPTO kids page: http://www.uspto.gov/kids/index.html

Another useful resource, of course, is just your basic search engine. Whether it’s Google, or Bing, or something else, is searching for clients, searching for competitors, searching for other potential infringements, or other potential conflicts of a new name. Search engines, we use them all the time. A great free website is called timeanddate.com. This website has all kinds of calendar tools on it. It will tell you about timezones. If I needed to know a deadline that was six months from last Friday, you can put in last Friday, and add six months, and it’ll tell you the exact deadline, so you can docket and calendar it. And you can subtract dates from it, so it has all kinds of great tools related to dates, and calendars, and time.

A tool that I use all the time to help create evidence of use to submit to the US Patent and Trademark Office, whether it’s with an application or with a renewal, it’s called FireShot. I believe there’s a free versions and a paid version. It’s a browser extension that works with all the leading browsers. It helps take a snapshot of a webpage or a snapshot of your screen, to be able to save it in different formats, and put a title on it, and put the date on it, a very useful tool in creating evidence in a lot of different trademark scenarios.

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about the one that I’ve built, which is called SofTMware, S-O-F-T-M-W-A-R-E, at softmware.com. There, you can create a secure, cloud-based account to monitor any applications or registrations, whether they’re yours, or a competitor’s, or they’re just interesting, or whether they’re potentially blocking your applications, and you can monitor the status there, and it will email you updates when status changes, and things like that.

Some other resources

• How to work from home: https://www.smewealthbuilder.com/how-to-work-from-home/
• Exercise daily: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoPk9DykSY-Zvy75fvpBsyg

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