Back on July 1, 2009 I filed online with the US Patent and Trademark office, for a trademark on "iBirdCount." I can't fathom what sort of research is involved with this process. Checked the status of my application, and learned that as of Oct. 2, the examining attorney could see no initial problems with the trademark and so the status has been moved to "Approved by the examining attorney for publication for opposition."
Of course I had to look that up. What they are going to do is publish our application for trademark in the Trademark Official Gazette, where any entity having issue with the name "iBirdCount" has 30 days to dispute it.
If everything goes well, the US Patent and Trademark office states that we may be issued a certificate authorizing our use of the word in 12 weeks after the publishing period... *phew* this seems like it is taking forever.
4 comments:
It's funny. I totally could have helped you with this since all I do all at work is read patents. Oops. I'm a bad daughter!
Looks like you're doin' just fine on your own!
Yay Mom!!!
Good on ya!!! Can't wait to see it!!
Back when I was working on AuctionPro, I looked into getting my little icon trademarked also. There wasn't any problem on the icon itself but the name AuctionPro was so close to another registered name that I would have had a lot of work to do to keep my name.....
Good luck to you - double yay!!
Congrats!! There is a group of birdwatchers that frequently gather at a field near me. Once you're up & running I'll stop and give them your info :)
Thank you everyone :-) I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be no problems. Hopefully, if all goes well and we can develop this as we expect it has the potential to provide us with income.
As a follow-up to it we want to create a program that runs on the computer which would allow you to sync your count data from the iPhone into a nice "journal" application.
Cheryl it is really nice of you to offer that! When it becomes available, it will be for sale/download through Apple's iPhone application store and I'm pretty sure we will be able to have discount codes to give out to special people... in this case, birder's who are lucky enough to know you :-)
We are initially aiming at more serious birder's/field scientists who have a working knowledge of identification (or field guides aplenty) who are needing a tool for maintaining count-data. Would be nice even if organizations went so far as to furnish their field peoples with an iPhone and our software like some businesses are already doing with other iPhone apps. :-)
Hopefully, we will do well with that audience and through their endorsement attract the hobby-birders.
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