Ronkainen: Intelligent Trademark Analysis: Large-Scale Evaluation of Real-World Legal AI

Anna Ronkainen, LL.M., of Onomatics, Inc., has posted Intelligent Trademark Analysis: Experiments in Large-Scale Evaluation of Real-World Legal AI, a paper she presented this week at ICAIL 2013: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Here is the abstract:

The intelligent trademark analysis system developed by Onomatics is a trademark information system based on an AI model of trademark similarity (likelihood of confusion). The basic technology can be used as a general trademark search engine as well as for more specific purposes ranging from trademark candidate ranking (TrademarkNow NameRank) to comprehensive risk analysis (TrademarkNow NameCheck) and IPR enforcement. This paper presents a brief overview of the system and the concrete applications available as of April 2013. The system has been evaluated on a large number of actual trademark opposition cases, over 30 000 from the USPTO TTAB and over 20 000 from the OHIM Opposition Division, currently with a precision of 79.9% and a recall of 94.9%.

HT @ronkaine

20-21 January Legal Hackathon re: Trademark Technology, Silicon Valley

Tim Hwang tells us that there will be a legal hackathon focusing on trademark technology, on 20-21 January 2013, in Mountain View, California, USA, sponsored by AttorneyFee.

The Twitter hashtag for the event is #TMHacks

Here is a description of the event:

AttorneyFee is holding its first hackathon ever, and we want you to join us! The event will kick off at 10:00 AM on January 20th and go till the next day at 5:00 PM. Copious amounts of caffeine, pizza, and beer will be provided. Come with a team, or come on your own and join a team. Come with an idea to work on, or join our ideation session in the morning to develop an idea. At the conclusion of the event each team will present their project, and the coolest project will win some swag.

The focus of the hackathon will be trademarks. Why trademarks, you ask? We recently finished building three super valuable APIs for trademarks that we hope will enable more open innovation in the space: (i) the AF TM applications API, (ii) the AF TM attorneys API, and (iii) the AF TM logos API. Together, these three APIs should enable devs to build a slew of cool new apps to disrupt the trademark industry. [...]

For more details, please see the complete announcement.

HT Tim Hwang

New from Robb Shecter: Quisitive App for U.S. Trademark Search

Robb Shecter, J.D., creator of OregonLaws.org and WebLaws.org, has released Quisitive, a new iPhone/iPad app that enables searches for U.S. trademarks, as well as research into trade names, branding, and U.S. trademark and copyright law.

According to the Quisitive press materials, Quisitive searches current “data from the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) TESS & TARR databases.”

Future plans for the app include adding commentary “from branding & intellectual property experts,” as well as “name screening against several common law data sources.”

For more information, please see the Quisitive Web site.

McKelvey et al. on The Communication of Trademark Rights & Licensing Policy on University Official Athletic Websites

Professor Steve McKelvey, Professor Sheranne Fairley, and Mark D. Groza, all of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Isenberg School of Management, have published Caught in the Web? The Communication of Trademark Rights and Licensing Policy on University Official Athletic Websites, Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, v. 20, no. 1, p. 1-34 (2010). Here is a summary:

This study sought to investigate the overall approach by which collegiate athletic departments communicate trademark rights and licensing policy to stakeholders via their official athletic website. This entailed not only a content analysis of what information was provided, but as importantly an examination of where this information was located on official athletic websites and the path to accessing it. The article first discusses the growing emphasis on trademark protection and enforcement within the collegiate athletics industry, followed by a review of prior literature that has called for more strategic approaches to trademark protection at the institutional level. The materials in these sections strongly suggest a need for more effective communication of trademark rights and licensing policy within the collegiate marketing and licensing industry. A discussion of the importance of websites as communication tools, the study method and the results are followed by a discussion of the findings and the implications for sport managers.

New from Robb Shecter: Permalinks to U.S. Trademark Records

Robb Shecter, creator of OregonLaws.org and WebLaws.org, has announced a new, innovative service: Permalinks to U.S. Trademark Records.

Robb explains that currently, links to trademark and servicemark online registration records of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) expire after a short time, and the PTO offers no permanent URL service. So Robb created a new service that enables users to “create links that don’t expire to trademarks at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.”

Robb says his service was inspired by tinyThom.as, a site providing a similar permalink service for U.S. federal legislation records stored on the Library of Congress’s THOMAS system.

Robb told me last week that he has the following plans for his trademarks permalink service:

• Make it easier to share a reg. page via a browser plugin and/or a web form where someone can copy & paste the original url to get a permanent one.
• Possibly adding the ability to create permalinks to searches, not just permanent records.

Please feel free to use Robb’s new service and let him know your ideas, either by contacting him directly or by commenting on this post.

June 30 Webcast: e-Justice Track of SEPG Europe 2010

A free Webcast of the e-Justice Track of the SEPG Europe 2010 Conference, will be held 30 June 2010. The event will be Webcast from the University of Porto Faculty of Engineering in Porto, Portugal.

Here are the major presentations to be given during the event:

• Mr José Magalhães, Secretary of State of Justice and the Judiciary Modernization, The quality of software as a sustainability factor for the use of the information technologies within the justice system;
• The quality of software as a sustainability factor for the use of the information technologies within the justice system – the Portuguese experience;
• Mr Bruno Sá, Chairman of the Information Technologies Institute of the Ministry of Justice, The dematerialization of processes in the courts;
• Mr António Figueiredo, Chairman of the Registers and Notaries Institute, The interoperability and the innovating registers services;
• Mr. Pedro Santos, Management Director of Industrial Property National Institute, On-Line Trade Marks and Patents;
• Mr Domingos Farinho, Director of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Means Cabinet, On-Line Alternative Dispute Resolution Means;
• Mrs Zaida Chora, Deputy Chairman of the Information Technologies Institute of the Ministry of Justice, The Development of Information Systems within the Public Administration;
• Mr Ponciano Oliveira, Deputy Chairman of the Information Technologies Institute of the Ministry of Justice, The use of information technologies within the justice systems on the international context.

Thanks to Stéphane Cottin for this information.