USPTO Performance and Accountability Report - U.S. Patent and ...

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MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
Trademark Trilateral Offices at USPTO headquarters
on December 5-7, 2011—the Japan Patent Office
(JPO) and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal
Market (OHIM), the European Union’s trademark and
design office. The meeting included both the Korean
Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and the Chinese
State Administration for Industry and Commerce
(SAIC) which were invited to join the Trademark Trilateral
as full partners. The group will be renamed the
“TM5” to recognize the expansion. The partners,
along with the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), shared information on the latest developments
in each office. They discussed how to move
forward on existing and potential cooperative
projects such as the TM5 Identification of Goods and
Services Project, a harmonized list of identifications of
goods and services and their classifications that
would be accepted in all TM5 offices, along with any
additional national office that has “docked on” to the
project, such as Canada, the Philippines, the Russian
Federation, Mexico, and Singapore.
OBJECTIVE 4: Enhance operations of
Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
The TTAB hosted a public, roundtable discussion with
representatives of stakeholder organizations regarding
Board performance measures in November, 2011.
The discussion promoted transparency in relation to
Board operations, explaining the basis for traditional
performance measures, and involved the participants
in discussion of what additional information and
dashboards would serve a useful purpose for attorneys,
applicants, and registrants. The Board also
received suggestions from participants about desirable
subjects for discussion in future roundtables.
The TTAB continued to work closely with the bar to
expand and refine its Accelerated Case Resolution
(ACR) practice options. The TTAB saw increased use
of ACR to expedite the disposition of inter partes
cases in FY 2012, with a 50 percent increase in the
number of cases decided based on utilization of
some form of ACR than in either of the two prior fiscal
years. To facilitate the use of ACR, the TTAB revised
materials posted on its Web page that provide stakeholders
with information about ACR. In addition, the
Board developed and posted on its Web page four
suggested approaches, to add to the previously
PERFORMANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY REPORT: FISCAL YEAR 2012
posted suggestions from one intellectual property
organization. The Board’s attorneys and judges also
continued to emphasize and promote the benefits of
ACR options during speeches, panel discussions and
through webinars.
In June 2012, the TTAB issued the first revision of the
third edition of the Trademark Board Manual of
Procedure (TBMP): www.uspto.gov/trademarks/
process/appeal/. The manual was revised to incorporate
new material related to December 2010
amendments of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,
many precedential decisions issued by the Board and
the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and to
acknowledge developments in practice since the
third edition was posted on the Board’s Web page in
May 2011. The Board also hired a senior level attorney,
who will serve as the TBMP editor and ensure the
manual is regularly revised.
Throughout the year, the Board continued its commitment
to developing the law by issuing a substantial
number of precedential opinions and orders, with 45
such decisions issued on a wide variety of substantive
and procedural matters. The TTAB’s precedential
decisions on ex parte appeals provide procedural
and substantive guidance to the agency’s trademark
examining attorneys, trademark owners, and the
trademark bar. The TTAB’s precedential decisions in
opposition and cancellation proceedings provide
guidance to trademark owners and the bar on procedural
matters pertaining to the Trademark Rules of
Practice, the application of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure to Board cases, and on substantive legal
matters.
OBJECTIVE 5: Modernize IT system by
developing and implementing the
Trademark Next Generation IT System
The Trademark organization is progressively becoming
a fully electronic organization. More than 98 percent
of new applications are received electronically and,
with progressive increases each year, in FY 2012 77.0
percent were processed completely electronically
from filing to final disposition (Table 15). This performance
result demonstrates the success of outreach
efforts to improve electronic correspondence
following the initial filing. An e-government task force