Trademark Office Hosts Roundtable on Paperlessness and Announces Change To e-Signature Approach

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) believes that going paperless would improve its system by making the process more efficient, more cost effective, more environmentally friendly, less susceptible to human error, and faster.  To that end, earlier this month, it hosted a roundtable discussion to address the goal of decreasing the use of paper in an attempt to distill certain best practices for trademark prosecution in the current electronic environment.  The discussion addressed issues concerning both those who presently authorize e-mail correspondence and those who do not. 

A video of the roundtable is available here. 

The USPTO also recently announced an important change to its TEAS electronic signature approach, which it intends to introduce in mid-January 2011.  Under the existing approach, the originator of an e-signature request is required to provide the e-mail address of the intended signatory, which has led to complications in the application process.  The new approach is intended to change the process so that the e-mail address of intended signatories will no longer be captured and the requestor will take direct control of the process. 

More details about the change are available here.