My name is Tasha Bunch and I'm an attorney in the trademarks legal policy
office joining me today we have Keri Genovese who is a senior attorney in the
office of petitions we have Robert Lavash who is a senior attorney in the
legal policy office Jessica LouDimond who is an attorney in the legal policy
office and Tanya Amos who is the TEAS administrator our TMEP editor
Kathy Kane is unable to join us today so I will go ahead and get us started
talking about mandatory electronic filing and some of the specimen
requirements I will be talking about some of the changes to some of the rule
changes based on mandatory electronic filing
so the first changes I will talk about are the changes to our filing date
requirements we will now require once the rule is in effect we will now
require that all applications filed under sections 1 and/or 44 be filed
using the TEAS system unless the application is filed by a national of an
exempt treaty country or a petition to accept a paper filing as granted we also
will require an email address for each applicant and we will require the
practitioner if there is one appointed we will require their postal and email
addresses in order to receive a filing date there are also some changes to our
filing options the t's + filing option will remain the same
however the t's our F and T's regular options will go away and instead we will
have the tea standard option at 275 dollars per class and that will now be
the default electronic filing option in addition paper will remain the same at
$600 per class I'd like to tell you a little bit about the processing fee for
falling off of T's plus the fee will only be charged now for failing to
comply with the t's plus initial filing requirements the first any submissions
subsequent paper filings if they are granted on petition
they will incur a paper fee as well as a petition fee but they will no longer
incur the additional processing fee T's plus them has some initial an additional
initial filing requirements dealing with entity standards so the domestic
partnerships must state the names and citizenship of the general partners
domestic joint ventures must state the names and citizenship of the active
members and sole proprietorships must provide the state of organization and
the name and citizenship of sole proprietors moving along to talk about
correspondence all filings relating to applications and registrations must be
submitted via T's unless once again it's filed by a national of an exempt treaty
country or a petition to accept a paper filing has been granted
however for applicants that prior to the effective date of the rule that were
filing under paper or T's regular or for post registration maintenance documents
filed before the effective date of the rule those filings are considered
grandfathered in for those filings you are not required to provide an email
address for correspondence or to file electronically however everyone should
be aware that fax transmission is no longer permitted unless specifically
directed by USPTO personnel
grandfathered filers should also keep in mind that all T's forms going forward
will require the applicants or n register or registrants email address
and the email address of a qualified practitioner if if one has been
appointed if an applicant or registrant who's grandfathered in attempts to use a
form the form will not validate without providing this information furthermore
the office will presume that email communication is authorized going
forward and they will no longer be allowed to file via paper without
submitting a petition
for the correspondence address under the new rule it will automatically be set to
the applicant if no attorney is appointed and it will be set to the
email address of the applicant or registrar in the file if the applicant
or registrar is represented then the correspondence will be sent to the email
address of the attorney of record unless one of three things happens a revocation
or a new power of attorney is filed the attorney has been suspended or excluded
from practice or recognition has ended courtesy email addresses will still be
permitted there is an exception for Madrid applications for the requirement
for an email address at initial filing 6 section 66 a first action pubs will
still be allowed under the new rule however for all subsequent submissions
they must be filed using the T system and must designate an email address for
correspondence in addition sometimes certain specimens must be mailed in
these would be for non-traditional marks such as scent or flavor marks if an
applicant is submitting a specimen for these type of marks they should indicate
in their t's filing that the specimen will be mailed in no petition requesting
acceptance of this mailed in specimen will be required please note that this
exception does not apply to sound or emotion marks the t's form permits
attachment of specimens for such marks as electronic files and now I will pass
it to my colleague Kari
Thank You Tasha I'm going to talk about when you are unable to file
electronically whether it's because the t system has failed or the user system
is having a problem this would include widespread disruptions natural disasters
and emergencies the procedures and requirements you should follow depend on
whether your attempt to file is before or on your filing deadline day if you're
filing attempt is before the filing deadline please try again later through
T's you can check the system status and availability availability page for any
declared widespread outages and scheduled maintenance if you're still
having issues contact the t's staff for technical assistance you can email them
at T's at uspto.gov and if you have questions for phone calls you can call
tac if you're filing attempt is the same day as the filing deadline and your
desired T's form or the t's fee payment processing system is unavailable but the
t's petition to director form is available please use that form you can
file the petition electronically on the due date including a written verified
explanation of why of how your form was unavailable evidence showing it was
unavailable the document you're attempting to file and the electronic
petition fee and any electronic fees for the filing you're trying to submit if
the filing attempt is the same day as your deadline and that your T's form is
unavailable as well as the t's petition to director form you will need to file
your petition on paper requesting acceptance of a paper filing you should
use the petition to accept paper cover sheet which has a checklist of the
requirements this will be posted on our website include proof that T's was
unavailable on the submission due date the proof can consist of a printout of a
screenshot showing the error message you received or a statement of this fact
with a signed declaration you'll need to provide a two hundred dollar paper
petition fee and any paper fees required for the document you're submitting the
signs certificate of mailing which is also
provided on the cover sheet and the document you're attempting to file and
we will provide pre preview PDFs for the t's forms that you can complete by hand
and submit if the filing attempt is the same day is the filing deadline and
you're unable to login to your uspto.gov account please first see the
troubleshooting tips on the FAQ s website if you're still unable you can
contact TAC they have the ability to help you reset your password and if it's
still you're still not able to log in in order to use T's you will need to follow
the instructions on the previous slide for filing your petition along with your
paper submission if the filing attempt is the same day as the filing deadline
and the USPTO has declared a widespread service disruption it will be posted on
our system status and availability page along with instructions about how to
submit your filing to us J in general fax transmission is not permitted unless
the USPTO has declared this type of widespread disruption and specifically
instructed customers to submit documents via fax otherwise it will be instructed
to submit documents via regular mail no petition or petition fee is required in
this situation if you're filing attempt is the same day as the filing deadline
and an extraordinary situation not covered by the other categories prevents
you from filing electronically you'll need to file on paper with petition
including an explanation as to why your situation qualifies as extraordinary and
you'll follow the same procedures outlined in the second scenario
previously discussed so just a brief synopsis of the three categories of
petitions to the director under the new rule two point one four seven the first
is this situation we've already discussed that as T's is unavailable on
the date of a deadline for submission and the applicant provides proof that
T's was unavailable the second category is for if for
example an applicant or registrant did was unaware of the manager
filing electronic filing requirements and previously filed a paper submission
that was not processed and was rejected by the USPTO within two months you can
file a petition to accept the previously submitted paper filing if you're unable
to resubmit the document electronically by the statutory deadline and this
option only applies to particular documents that have statutory filing
deadlines such as a statement of use a section 8 or 71 declaration of user
excusable non-use the third set the third category is kind of the same
catch-all category as mentioned on the previous slide if the applicant or
registrant doesn't qualify under one of the first two sections of the rule they
can request acceptance of a paper submission due to some other
extraordinary situation but please keep in mind regularly scheduled teas
maintenance or user error will generally not be considered an extraordinary
situation and the rules and policies regarding postal service interruptions
and emergencies remain unchanged and I will pass this to Robert lavash who's
going to discuss iseman rule updates thank you very much Carrie
as Carrie mentioned I'm going to be talking about updates to rule 2.56 the
specimen rule which we included in the mandatory electronic filing rule package
to better conform with existing statutory requirements and presidential
case law regarding specimens so first let's talk about our update to the
wording regarding labels and tags you'll see with the underlined wording here
that the rule now refers to a trademark specimen for goods having to be on
containers marks on the goods on the containers our packaging for the goods
on labels or tags affixed to the goods or on a display associated with the
goods and this change was intended to incorporate the language regarding use
of Commerce that's in section 45 of the trademark Act
now although the rule says labels or tags affixed labels of tags that are not
affixed may still be accepted if on their face they clearly show the mark in
actual use in commerce so that means that the tag or label would have to
include the informational matter that typically appears on a label for those
types of goods so for food it might be something like net weight or volume
often on an actual label you'll see a UPC barcode and then in other cases you
might see lists of contents or ingredients so we're looking for the
indicia of use and commerce on that label if it's on a fixed so if a label
or tag does not clearly show actual use in commerce because it appears for
instance to be merely temporary or it appears to be a mock-up it will likely
be refused under trademark Act sections 1 and 45 for failure to show the mark in
actual use in commerce in connection with the goods in addition the examining
attorney is likely to include with that refusal a request for information under
Rule 2.61 B to clarify use of the specimen in commerce so here we've got a
couple of example examples of labels that we would still deem to be
acceptable even though they are not shown a fix to the goods in the first
case you have a unattached label for crab rangoon
it has a UPC code it has the mark it has the number of indicia that you would see
on a label that's actually used in commerce likewise on the second specimen
we see a lot of product information a UPC label safety information and it's
clear that this is the type of label that could be immediately applied to the
goods in question so both of these under the amended rules would still be
acceptable and here's yet another one that would be acceptable this is a wine
label it has the usual information that wine labels either usually contain
or are required to contain under other regulations that has a UPC code has the
government warning it looks like a label that could be
applied to a wine bottle so we would take this these are examples of
specimens that are likely to get a refusal under the rule and the reason is
they look temporary or mocked up it's not clear that these are labels that are
actually used on the goods in commerce they have a temporary mocked up look to
them in this case these specimens are likely to get a refusal and a request
for information it is still possible that the applicant could respond and
explain that yes this is indeed how we fix our labels and provides additional
evidence to to show to show that in that case the examining attorney may withdraw
the refusal so let's move on to 2.56 b2 which is the service mark requirements
we've now updated that that rule language to incorporate wording that's
consistent with recent TTAB decisions and examination policy so now we refer
to use of the mark in the performance or rendering of the service services and we
refer to the mark meeting to show the specimen needing to show a direct
association between the mark and the services in this first example we show a
specimen that does show a direct association of the mark and the
identified services in the upper left corner of the screen there you see the
the mark Civics and in the middle right portion you see a direct reference to
the identified services digital marketing and advertising so in this
case the direct Association is shown and the mark that specimen would be
acceptable under the rule in this example which is a bit more nuanced
we have the mark appearing on the specimens and the identified services
our retail store services featuring medical devices these specimens are
likely to be refused as not showing a direct association because again we've
identified retail store services but the specimens in use here appear to be
invoices in a sales addendum that typically you would not see when used in
the retail store environment it's not typically the type of materials that are
associated with that and there's otherwise no direct reference to the
retail store services so in that case the specimens are likely to be refused
moving on to rule 2.5 6c we've updated our rule regarding webpage specimens we
now require that each webpage specimen include the URL URL and the access or
print date of that of the web page that's excerpted so here's just an
example of that in the upper left corner you see the access date further to the
right you see the URL URL if the webpage specimen contains the URL and access
date in this manner it's likely to comply with the rule and now we just
have a couple seconds to switch over to our other presentation and I'm going to
turn it over to Jessica Lou Diamond
great thank you as Robert mentioned I'm going to be
discussing the t's form updates that are being made in conjunction with the
mandatory electronic filing rulemaking today we're going to discuss the changes
that affect all the forms the initial application forms the petition forms the
post registration forms and the correspondence and attorney and domestic
representative forms first we'll start with changes affecting all the forms one
of the biggest changes you'll notice is that the owner email address field is
now mandatory if you've used artis forms before you've
probably seen that we have a checkbox underneath the owner and attorney email
address fields to provide authorization for the USPTO to communicate under this
new rulemaking email authorization is presumed so we've removed the checkbox
for authorizing email communication when you provide an email address for either
the owner holder the attorney or the domestic representative we also have
revised the correspondence information page in all the t's forms we've removed
the postal address the telephone number and fax number fields the name and
primary email address fields for correspondence are not editable on this
page they populate from either the attorneys email address if an attorney
is appointed otherwise from the trademark owners email address you can
enter up to four secondary email addresses for courtesy copies of USPTO
communications on this page similarly the validation page previously has had
an email for ignite the user could edit to enter the email address to receive
you received for filing this field has now been renamed the primary email
address for correspondence and there is a new secondary email address field to
make it easier to identify the recipients of the filing receipt you
cannot change these email addresses on this page these email addresses are used
to send the t's filing receipt email these email addresses pre-populate with
the primary email address for correspondence again this is either the
appointed attorneys email address or the trademark owners email address if an
attorney is not appointed and again the secondary email address is if anywhere
it will also appear here you should also know that most T's forms now contain
both an owner and an attorney information page this will make it
easier to provide required information without having to access a separate form
you'll be able to provide attorney Bar membership information an attorney email
address or an owner email address on most forms we also have a new owner
information page for our Madrid filers the t's forms will include this version
for all 79 series files it'll permit the addition or update of an owner holder
email address please note that changes to the owner holders postal address must
continue to be made using the WIPO mm9 form a separate domicile address can be
provided for 79 series owner holders in the new change address or representation
form we'll discuss both the domicile address and the change address their
representation form a little bit later another addition to the forms is a
separate field for recognized Canadian attorneys and agents currently
recognized Canadian attorneys and agents have to be entered in the other
appointed attorneys field on the attorney information page now they can
be entered separately in the recognized Canadian attorney agent field next we'll
move on to changes to the initial application forms as we mentioned
earlier in this presentation the filing options have changed T's RF has been
renamed t standard and T's regular is no longer a filing option there is now
going to be a new single initial application form for T's plus and T's
standard a domicile address can be provided for the trademark owner this
address is kept private by using a new field we also have new fields for the
sole proprietor these provide clear prompts for required information as I
mentioned the T's plus and t standard initial application form is now a single
combined form on the wizard page you'll select the desired filing option you can
toggle between these filing options while in the form if needed by returning
to the wizard page and simply clicking on the correct radio button and moving
back through the form we also now have a new domicile address field we've
enhanced the initial application forms and the new change address or
representation form to allow owners to provide a separate domicile address
although the USPTO presumes that the owners street address an owner's
domicile address are the same if they are not you may enter a separate address
in the domicile address field this address is not publicly viewable in the
USPTO s TSD our database we made this edition in response to concerns from our
customers about privacy as I said it's not viewable in the TSD our database and
this includes both on the Status tab and in the documents themselves
on the owner information page we have new fields for the sole proprietors
domestic sole proprietors will now enter their name in a text field the sole
proprietors citizenship is separately selected from a drop-down menu now we'll
discuss changes to the petition forms we have a revised petition to the director
form this form now has dedicated fields instead of an open text box the reasons
for the petition and any necessary updates to the application or
registration that are the subject of the petition are clearly identified on the
wizard page you'll enter your serial number or registration number and on the
next screen you'll select the reason for your petition there are two versions of
this there will be reasons for pre-registration filings and post
registration filings you'll select the reason for your petition using the
appropriate radio button and then you'll answer questions to indicate the type of
information you want to provide within the petition the wizard questions will
help you build a personalized form with dedicated fields for filing information
next we'll discuss changes to the post registration forms the post registration
response to office action form has been enhanced to a dedicated field form
you'll select the filing that prompted the office action and the wizard
questions will allow you to build a customized response again you'll use
dedicated fields instead of an open text box for providing your response similar
to the petition to the director you'll select using radio buttons the dedicated
form options for your filing type you'll choose your option and then complete
your form next we'll discuss changes to correspondence and attorney and domestic
representative forms we have consolidated six closely related forms
into one this will allow you to complete a single form for several related
Auctions this new form is called the change address or representation form we
have included the revocation appointment of attorney and domestic representative
form the change of domestic representatives address withdrawal of
domestic representative change of owner address change of correspondents address
and the replacement of attorney form this new form uses role-based logic
you'll enter your serial or registration numbers and then will identify yourself
as either the owner attorney or domestic representative by selecting the
appropriate radio button questions appropriate to the identified role will
appear based on the status of the files in the USPTO s database and the user
will indicate what data should be updated on this screen we're showing you
the types of updates that can be made in your application or registration you can
update contact information for the trademark owner holder an already
appointed attorney or an already appointed domestic representative this
includes updating attorney bar information you can appoint a u.s.
licensed attorney to represent you before the USPTO or appointed domestic
representative you can appear for the first time as attorney of record on
behalf of an owner holder who is not currently represented you can replace
the attorney of record with another already appointed attorney you can
revoke the power of a previously appointed attorney remove a previously
appointed attorney from the record because the power is undead or withdraw
is domestic representative last we're going to discuss the deployment teas
antes I will be unavailable on Saturday December 21st from 12:01 a.m. until 8:00
a.m. Eastern Time to incorporate the mandatory electronic filing changes you
must file all saved forms and ecig mature forms by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time
on Friday December 20th 2019 so that your data is not lost if you do not file
all of your save forms by that time you will have to start the
process again with new forms if you have any questions about the information we
discussed during this webinar you can email TM underscore webinar at USPTO gov
and we'll be happy to answer questions
I'm now going to take a look at our mailbox and see what we have is
questions that have come in my name is Tonya Amos and I'm the t's administrator
the first question that we have is it looks like it's for Jessica its is the
domicile information only masked if I use the new domicile address field
that's a great question and yes that is correct you must use the dedicated
domicile address field in order for your information to be masked if you include
that address in any other miscellaneous field or otherwise in a response it will
not be masked within that document the next question is related to specimens it
is does the URL and access data have to be on the specimen or can it be
somewhere else in the filing Bob would you be able to answer that question sure
ideally we would like it to be on the specimen itself but that's not a
requirement you can include it elsewhere in the in the filing it's the
application or the response to office action or you could even include it in a
subsequent filing the next question that's come in is I see that email
authorization is presumed what if I previously did not authorize email but
provided an email address what happens after mandatory electronic filing
Jessica can you answer that question yes so even if you previously did not
provide email authorization once you come in and use the t's form the forms
are automatically presuming email authorization so once you access and use
and file using the forms email authorization is now presumed great and
we have another question which is how do I change the email address on the
validation page for the filing receipt I guess
Jessica you probably be in the best shape to answer that one that's another
good question similar to you how I explained that the email addresses were
not edible editable on the correspondence information page they are
also not editable on the validation page so if you do need to make a change the
primary email address for correspondence whether it's the one that you see
appearing on the validation page same as the one that's appearing on the
correspondence information page you would have to go back in the form to
make that edit if you have an appointed attorney you'll have to edit the email
address for your appointed attorney if you're an unrepresented owner you would
edit your owner email address the secondary email addresses the courtesy
copies those are edited on the correspondence information page ok we
now have a question about evidence it's what type of evidence must be
provided to show that Teese was unavailable Carrie would you be able to
answer so evidence could consist of the screenshot of the error message you
received when you attempted to file a teas form and were unable to do so
it could also consist of email correspondence between an applicant and
register registrant and the teas staff or just a statement saying I was unable
to access teas along with the a signed declaration under Rule 2.20 without the
standard declaration language ok um and we have another question that just came
in Bob I think this one is for you it's at what stage and the application is the
applicant now required at what stage is the
applicant email required right as soon as you file it right yeah so if you if
you're unrepresented you need to provide your email address and if you are
represented by an attorney you're gonna need to provide your email address and
the attorneys email address I should say the attorney is going to provide that
information if you have an attorney okay and the next question that I have is why
would I be able to file a t's petition form if the other forms are unavailable
I can answer that I attempt to so sometimes there could be a situation
where there's a glitch with one particular T's form or you're unable to
submit the t's form you're trying to submit because of a payment processing
error and so the t's petition to director form the new one has an option
that you can select it's a radio button option that you
encountered an error when trying to process fees on another T's form and
you'll be able to proceed through the form that way so it we're hoping that
that would help customers get get something in the door if they're having
issues with their other T's forms and you know pay the lower electronic filing
fees all right we have a question about issues that might occur after the
deployment what do I do if I have an issue after the deployment
Jessica can you answer that so just as you're doing now you'll do also after
the deployment if you are having technical problems please email teased
at uspto.gov okay we have a question about the new car form the the question
is we have different radio buttons for the owner the attorney of the record and
the domestic representative this new form can you click on two
options at the same time or is it a single option it is a single option so
you will have to select one radio button identifying your role in either the
application or registration ok and if you appoint an attorney who are you
sending correspondence to kasher can you answer that question sure I can answer
that question correspondence will be sent to the the email address of the
attorney of record okay and the next question is where do I get information
on outages okay or you can answer that and it's our current website I believe
right now it's called filing documents during an outage it will be renamed in
the near future but we will provide lots of information on that page about how to
submit your documents if there's an outage and always to check the system
status and availability page for our current status ok we have a question on
can I send my document in via email Tasha
sure I can answer that question formal communications still cannot be sent via
email only in formal communications ok and we have another question that's come
in that is how are you keeping owner email addresses private and I can answer
that question because I was intimately involved about three or four months ago
we had a TS TR release we're on the Status page we masked the owner email
address of unrepresented owner so if you go into TS CR now and you go to the
Status page you'll notice that the owner email address is masked let me see if we
have any more questions that came in oh here's a question on
what do you recommend we do to avoid filing on paper carry this sounds like a
petition sure the first tip would be do not wait till the last day just to make
sure that you give yourself plenty of time otherwise you know keep sign up for
TM alerts if there's some sort of major outage or anything like that we would
send a team alert and the bookmark the system status an availability page and
also we will provide on our on the outages page there will be a
downloadable PDF for the petition to accept paper you can download that and
save that on your computer in the event of an emergency that's about it okay our
next question is how do I indicate that I will be mailing in a specimen for a
non-traditional mark Bob can you answer that one well when you do that you can
have to file electronically but you have to indicate in the application that you
are separately submitting your specimen by by mail and I believe there's a
there's a checkbox that you can check off to indicate that and let's see if
there's any more questions here's one if I was a tease regular application and I
file my response electronically and have to add a class what is the fee that all
be paying I can answer that one so if a an applicant that originally filed
teased regular and they submit electronically to add a class they will
now pay the default t standard filing fee of two hundred and seventy five
dollars per class okay and here's one that just came in it says there is a
time delay from when an application is filed until the application is
accessible in the t system will the new petition form allow the user to enter a
serial number for an application not otherwise available in the t system in
the following the new application filing and
I'll go ahead and answer that question the answer is unfortunately no once the
t's application is filed it still has to go through our back-end processing and
be assigned a serial number before it'll be eligible for use of the petition form
if you have a particular scenario that requires immediate assistance please
don't hesitate to email T's @ uspto.gov we'll gladly assist you let's see if we
have any more that have come in what if I filed on paper or a T's regular
application before December 21st am i obligated to file electronically I can
answer that question as I talked about in my on my slides for applicants that
file on paper or T's regular you are considered grandfathered in at the time
of the ruling you can continue to file on paper if you so choose however you
should be aware that if you do use the t's form it will require you to submit
an email address in order to submit the form and going forward you will be
required to meet the mandatory electronic filing rule requirements okay
and let's see if we have any new questions that have come in
okay we have a question this is more about the US council rules it says we
are a u.s. corporation using an attorney why do we need to provide Attorney Bar
Association information I thought this was only for foreign applicants Bob
would you be able to answer oh yeah sure no the rule does require attorney bar
info for the attorneys that are appearing as primary attorney in the
record so that is in the US council rule and the reason for it is we need to be
able to verify that the person who has identified themselves as an attorney is
an attorney and is the attorney that they say they are so it's to help us
sort of police some of the improper activities that we've been seeing in the
last couple of years okay let's see if we got anything else
the question is with this new car form the correspondence address and attorney
representation form will there still be an open text box filled in the form it
depends on the type of information that you're trying to provide for the most
part this is a dedicated filled form and so there will be prompts for all of the
information that you would want to provide there will be an owner
information page an attorney information page a domestic representatives
information page and those pages are crafted specially for the type of change
you're trying to make so the attorney information page may be modified
depending on whether or not this is a replacement versus an appointment of a
newly appearing attorney and the there's now a question about this goes back to
petitions evidence I think this is Carrie it's if the problem if there's an
outage and the problem is on the customer's end as opposed to the USPTO S
and what type of evidence do they need to submit in general a declaration
saying that you had an internet outage that day or whatever the problem may be
a power outage that would be fine as long as it's a statement accompanied
with a signed declaration thank you we've got a question asking us if
there's any plan to integrate into a single form a request to divide an
extension request and a statement of use I think that's a great idea I'll take
that question I'll certainly add it to our backlog we did not have the time to
do this and our next release will be dedicated to more login issues so I
certainly think this is something that we can explore for a future release down
the line please keep the questions coming we have a few more minutes
the here's a question its if an applicant registrant is represented by
an attorney is it still required to include an email address for the
applicant registrant and then the second part to that question is can you use the
attorney's email address in the applicant the owner email address field
so as far as using the the owner and attorney email address as being the same
that we cannot do the rule very specifically states that we need the
individual email address of both the trademark owner and the appointed
attorney I'm sorry was there a second part to that question I think you
answered the first part right whether they needed to have an applicant email
address in addition to an attorney and rule requires both yes and the form
itself is going to prompt you for that information if you do enter an owner
email address on the owner information page that then matches the email address
that's entered at the attorney information page you will receive an
error that will prevent you from moving forward in the forum because these email
addresses should be individual to the specific person okay we have a question
asking us what are the different types of widespread outages can we give an
example well in the past I would say we had a huge power outage at the USPTO in
2015 I think that was that was one of those situations I don't remember
anything more recently do you where we declared
an outage no that was the most recent one and then we have another person we
that it's asking if you have to submit an email address for the applicant
registrant if they're represented by a and the answer again is yes the rule
requires both an applicant register at the owner email address as well as the
attorney email address let's see if there's anything else that's out there
there's a question about where are the forms located if the system goes down we
will not be able to access them is if T's is down so how do we find the
information that we need in order to file our petition right so this is a
great question and something we hope doesn't happen but that's why I
encourage everyone to bookmark the page where all the outages information is
going to be posted and also to download a PDF copy of the petition to director
cover sheet which will have the checklist of all the requirements and I
don't Tanja might know better where the PDFs are posted for the the t's form
previews that would also be a good thing to save so that you have them at your
disposal so you know if you're filing a response to office action there will be
a preview PDF created that you can you know fill out by hand and send in and
they in the event our website is down right and right now those t's PDF
previews are located underneath each of the relevant T's forms so underneath the
initial application form you'll see the preview PDF we we have plans to make
them easier to find and and to add them on the outages gotcha so you're in a few
weeks you'll you'll see them in a more centralized location we've got another
question this is about the about changing address it says if you simply
want to file a change of address for the law firm that represents the applicant
or registrar do you need to include the owner email
with that law firm change-of-address that's a good question if you have not
previously provided an owner email address the form will prompt you when
you access that initial set of wizard questions you'll be presented with
options for things like do you want to update the information for the trademark
owner do you want to update the information for the already appointed
attorney if you answer yes to only the question for updating the information of
the appointed attorney when in fact you also have information missing for the
trademark owner you are going to receive an error message telling you that you
must answer yes to the question for providing whatever the missing
information is for the trademark owner so then both pages will present within
the forum we have a new question that's about owner email addresses it's if the
applicant is a corporation and not an individual what email address should be
years and I I think that that's it has to be an email address that is owned by
the corporation so as opposed to a third party so whatever your corporate email
address is that's the email address that you would include in the forum do you
all agree yeah has to be a contact person at the corporate entity I would
say their email address right and we've we've had a lot of questions about the
the slides and and the where they are located I wanted to let you all know
that the slides are currently on the events page on the USPTO website and
that we are going to post this recording so that you can review it it'll be
posted as soon as it's available so in a shortly please let us know if you have
any other questions there is a slight delay from when they come in
when I'm seeing them
do you have guys have any other things that you think we could raise while we
wait for the milk my servers a little slow
here's one we have the this question appears to be related to login it's
asking whether you can use the Authenticator app to log in as opposed
to waiting for for an email when when you log in so when you signup to log in
to the t's forms you have to use two-factor authentication which means
the USPTO will be sending you a code and that code will come to you either by
email or by phone or by use of an Authenticator app and you're right if
you if you want do not want to wait for the email to arrive because it there can
be a delay either with your email server or with the USPTO server you can
download a free Authenticator app from from your one of your the providers out
there and use that an old general automatically generate a six digit code
there's instructions if you go to our website up in the upper right-hand
corner in the my uspto.gov section there are instructions for how to download an
Authenticator app and use it to log into our system so that you don't have to
wait for an email from the USPTO and if you have any issues when trying to log
in or set up either the password or receiving the six digit code please
don't hesitate to email us at t--'s at uspto.gov and we'll gladly assist you
okay if there are no more questions right now we will close the session and
thank everyone for their time and if after the session it ends up that there
are more questions that come in we will post them as well on the web page so
that you can see the answers and if you have any individualized questions please
don't hesitate to email us at TEAS@uspto.gov will gladly answer all of your
questions in any that you can think of in the
upcoming weeks and we look forward to mandatory electronic filing and
assurance will be a smooth transition thanks a lot and have a nice day!