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Trademark filings now available on the web
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is now offering documents in the official trademark application file, including all decisions made by trademark examining attorneys and their reasons for making them. Here is more from the press release:
Trademark Document Retrieval (TDR) offers the public an advanced electronic portal to PDF viewing, downloading and printing of an array of information and documents for more than 460,000 trademark applications totaling more than eight million document pages. As new applications are filed, they will be added to the database. It is expected that more than 300,000 application files will be added annually. Over the next five years, the remaining paper files of approximately 1.2 million active trademark registrations will be converted into digital format for TDR access. “Trademarks help consumers distinguish among products and services and are often an organization’s most valuable asset,†noted Jon Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO. “The TDR system improves our ability to provide timely and useful information to business owners as they develop their marks and prepare to file trademark applications.†The TDR system builds on the USPTO’s First Action System for Trademarks (FAST), which replaced paper files and is now used by all trademark examining attorneys to review applications. All federally registered and pending trademarks are available to the public on the USPTO’s Web site (www.uspto.gov), where status information is also available. The trademark data includes nearly 2 million pending and registered trademarks dating back to 1885 and represents more than 100 years of marketing creativity.
Thanks to beSpacific
Continue readingChamber of Commerce: Scientific Experts?
OMB Watch - Industry Challenge Prompts Removal of EPA Database
OMB Watch reports that "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has removed one database from its public website and slightly altered another due to a Data Quality Act (DQA) challenge submitted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce." The Chamber claims some of the data are erroneous, inconsistent and contradictory.
The Data Quality Act is less than half a page in a public law of more seven hundred pages (Public Law 106-554 Sec. 515; Statutes at Large volume 114, pages 2763A-153 to 2763A-154, available online as plain text and as pdf). The Act is nominally about requiring the government to set standards for the accuracy of scientific information, but is controversial because it was supported and largely written by industry-backed groups which have are using it to challenge government data. Successful challenges such as this one can result in the data being withdrawn from publication and withdrawn from government web sites.
Continue readingNRC Censors Environmental Impact Statement
NRC Censors Environmental Impact Statement. OMB Watch. 01/24/2005.
OMB Watch reports that "The public will not have access to health and safety data about a proposed uranium enrichment plant in New Mexico, despite a legal requirement that the public have ample access to such information."
Continue readingGSA to charge for information
This article relates an interesting example of a government agency wanting to make information available for free to the public using older technology (FTP), but charging for better access (Web Services, continuous feeds). GSA to charge $2,500 for Web services access to procurement data By Jason Miller, Government Computer News 12/29/04
The General Services Administration made it official yesterday, setting a one-time fee of $2,500 for vendors and the public to receive a direct, continuous feed from the new Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation via Web services. The data will remain free for those who choose to receive the information via File Transfer Protocol or to perform ad hoc or prewritten queries of the database, GSA said in the interim rule with a request for comments published in Tuesday's Federal Register. Comments are due Feb. 28.("Web Services" is a term than encompasses a broad range of technologies that have the potential for transforming the web as we know it to something much more exciting and functional -- in the same way that HTML transformed The Internet from file transfer and email to what we use today. See, for example, http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/ and http://webservices.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2001/04/04/webservices/index.html.) Continue reading
Lawsuit seeks to free Johnson’s President’s Daily Briefs
Professor Sues CIA for President's Daily Briefs The National Security Archive, George Washington University. December 23, 2004.
Davis, CA, 23 December 2004 - University of California, Davis professor Larry Berman today filed suit against the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, seeking release of historic President's Daily Briefs given to President Johnson during the Vietnam War.Continue reading
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