Month: July 2020

One of the design goals of Patentcenter is to provide the functions of EFS-Web.  In EFS-Web, the most frequently carried-out tasks are:

• file a new patent application
• start a new follow-on submission (a subsequently filed document)
• open a saved submission to continue the submission process

So let’s go on a treasure hunt, shall we?  Where can we find these three tasks, somewhere on the main menu bar of Patentcenter?  The answer is, not one of these three tasks can be found at the place where you would guess it to be based upon the wording of that main menu bar.  This is Trouble Ticket CP34. Continue reading “Patentcenter uses wrong words on links”

There are many things that Palm reveals to people inside of the USPTO, that PAIR and Patentcenter do not reveal to applicants.  Here are some of those things that Patentcenter should reveal to applicants. Continue reading “Patentcenter should reveal application status”

Broadly speaking, Patentcenter does extremely poorly on validations.  The designers of Patentcenter would merely need to have looked at ePCT to see how to do validations correctly.  Here are examples of validations and how to do them right and how to fail to do them, and how to do them wrong. Continue reading “Validations in Patentcenter”

Get rid of or correct or improve the “boy who cried wolf” nag message in Patentcenter about paying fees.

This is Feature Request FR25. Continue reading “Get rid of or correct or improve the “boy who cried wolf” nag message about paying fees”

When an ADS turns out to be unsigned, or not correctly signed, or not signed by a practitioner, it leads to a cascade of problems.  It often takes months or a lot of money, or both, to fix the problems.   It would be trivially easy for Patentcenter to check an uploaded computer-readable Form PTO/AIA/14 (Application Data Sheet) such as we see at right, for a signature.  But Patentcenter does not do so.

Patentcenter should check an uploaded ADS for a signature and should display warnings as needed.  This is Feature Request FR24. Continue reading “Patentcenter should check uploaded ADS for a signature”

When a filer uploads Form PTO/AIA/14 (Application Data Sheet), Patentcenter should carry out validations.  As mentioned here, Patentcenter should validate priority claims against DAS.  This blog article points out that Patentcenter should validate the “non-inventor applicant” excuse field.

This is Feature Request FR23.  

Continue reading “Patentcenter should validate the “non-inventor applicant” excuse field”

Getting a priority claim wrong in a patent application is a serious matter. There’s a super-simple thing that ePCT does to prevent many ways of getting priority claims wrong, that Patentcenter fails to do.  Of course Patentcenter should do the same validation that ePCT does — cross-checking against DAS.  I’ll explain. Continue reading “Patentcenter should validate priority claims against DAS”

The coders who designed the Patentcenter workbench made a mistake in the “sort by patent number” function.  This is listserv trouble ticket number CP33. Continue reading “Patentcenter’s “sort by patent number” does not work correctly”