I’ve heard so much whining and moaning in public about how the government payroll is bloated and overpaid and doesn’t work and how we should outsource the whole thing to private industry or India or both.

I can’t take it any more.  I just got off the phone with the USPTO.  Yes the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  I hit “0” and got a knowledgable, pleasant person on the phone within 4 rings that answered all my questions.  Try calling Verizon and having that happen.

I filed my SaneBox trademark on June 23, 2010, sure I would have liked it to have gotten assigned to an attorney sooner.  But, I can only imagine how many of these applications they get every day.

The USPTO has a system that enables actual humans (not lawyers) to fill out these applications online. I’ve done it with lawyers and without.  In the end, I’ve found it is easier to do it without.  The lawyers ask exactly the same questions the website does but at $400 an hour.

Quick hints for filling out the form:

1. Search for marks from companies that are really well funded that do something similar to your product.  Especially marks for competitive companies.
2. File with their wording (adapted for your use) and for the classes they chose. My personal favorite is Google.  They have great lawyers and have trademarks for just about everything

You fill out the paperwork, pay, and wait. They assign a lawyer who looks into the mark and either pushes back or publishes it for opposition.  And when they push back (they didn’t in this case), the lawyer tells you exactly what they found wrong and even suggests wording that would fix it.  Seriously.

30 days later, if there is no opposition (there wasn’t for SaneBox). Your mark proceeds to publication.  My current publication date is 2/1/2011.

Can you imagine what this process would have been like or how much it would cost if this were run by Haliburton?  Enough whining. Sure some stuff about government is broken but that is true of any large organization. Let’s get off the back of the people that get the work done. In my experience, they are doing an awesome job.