What we see today is some user-friendliness on the part of the European Patent Office. EPO is now making it even easier than before for PCT applicants to receive communications electronically from ISA/EP and IPEA/EP. Continue reading “Good news for those who use ISA/EP and IPEA/EP”
My luggage tracking tag ended up in Portugal
I use luggage tracking tags. As you can see from the map at right, it looks like my medium-sized suitcase is at Porto Airport in Portugal. Actually the suitcase is with me right now at home in the mountains of Colorado. What explains this? Continue reading “My luggage tracking tag ended up in Portugal”
Where my blog traffic comes from?
I find it interesting that nowadays, a lot of my blog traffic comes from Reddit. Continue reading “Where my blog traffic comes from?”
Today, Google cut off another 48 members of the e-Trademarks listserv
For more than thirty years I have sponsored The Listservs. Each listserv is an email discussion group. I have sponsored listservs for patent practitioners, for trademark practitioners, and for industrial design protection practitioners. I have sponsored listservs for users of the Patent Cooperation Treaty and for users of Patent Center. And today, Google cut off 48 members of the e-Trademarks listserv.
What is Google doing wrong and what can be done about it? Continue reading “Today, Google cut off another 48 members of the e-Trademarks listserv”
USPTO corrects its new web site
Two days ago I blogged (see blog article) about a hallucination on the USPTO’s new web site, namely the existence of a “provisional patent”. The web site said:
File a provisional patent
Now the USPTO has corrected the web site. Now the bullet point is:
File a provisional patent application
Adding a barometric pressure sensor to a Meshtastic rooftop solar node
Recently I added an environmental sensor to a rooftop solar meshtastic node. This provides telemetry of temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. In this article I describe what was required to accomplish this. Continue reading “Adding a barometric pressure sensor to a Meshtastic rooftop solar node”
USPTO hallucinates the “provisional patent”
(Update: two days after this blog posting, the USPTO corrected its hallucination. See blog post.)
There is no such thing as a “provisional patent”. Everyone knows this. Everyone except, it turns out, the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Continue reading “USPTO hallucinates the “provisional patent””
What kinds of USPTO communications are secure and not secure?
When I was first in practice, a long time ago, the only ways to communicate with a patent examiner at the USPTO were:
-
- postal mail (and couriers)
- telephone calls
- fax
- hand-carry.
The USPTO’s policy, to the extent that such a thing had been thought about at all, was that all of these kinds of communication were sufficiently secure as to satisfy national security requirements. You might file a patent application the contents of which were so sensitive that a foreign filing licence would not be granted, and it was okay that the way you sent it to the USPTO was by postal service.
But what kinds of communication are actually secure? As I discuss below, the USPTO has this kind of thing absolutely backwards. What USPTO thinks is secure is not secure, and vice versa. Continue reading “What kinds of USPTO communications are secure and not secure?”
What to make of the threats from AI that jeopardize software that we all rely upon?
Recent news articles talk about instances where Anthropic’s Mythos AI is said to have found software flaws in pieces of software that have been around for a long time. The pieces of software in which Mythos has been said to have found flaws were each from the open-source community.
What should we, as readers and users of software, make of this? What should we do differently? Should we avoid open-source software? In this blog article I offer my thoughts. I do think there are things that we, as readers and users of software, should do and not do. But avoiding open-source software is not among them. Continue reading “What to make of the threats from AI that jeopardize software that we all rely upon?”
Happy World Quantum Day!
I must confess I was not aware, until a few moments ago, that there was such a thing as a World Quantum Day.
You can see the Wikipedia page about World Quantum Day.
You can see a nice video with some fun facts about quantum physics.