Month: October 2023

Posted on

AIPLA and 123 Patent Practitioners each file a comment to OMB about USPTO’s DOCX initiative

It will be recalled that there was an opportunity to help the Office of Management and Budget appreciate the problems with USPTO’s plans to charge a $400 penalty for those who fail to file their patent applications in Microsoft Word format.   This opportunity appeared in a Federal Register notice dated September 27, 2023 (88 FR 66414).  It established a due date of October 27, 2023 for public comment.

I was honored to be among the signers of a comment letter from One Hundred Twenty-Three Patent Professionals dated October 27, 2023.  This was a lot of work for David Boundy, to whom the patent community is thankful.  You can see the letter here and it is archived here.

I am delighted to see that AIPLA has also filed a comment on this.   You can see the letter, which is dated October 27, 2023, here and it is archived here.

It will be very interesting to see what, if anything, the Office of Management and Budget decides about this DOCX issue.

Posted on

Detailed review of USPTO’s 18-slide deck about Patent Center

As described in this report, a face-to-face meeting took place on October 18, 2023 between representatives of the Patent Center listserv and Commissioner for Patents Vaishali Udupa and her Patent Center staff.   At the start of the meeting, Commissioner Udupa started to present an 18-slide deck which we had never seen before.  You can see the slide deck here.  Slides 3 through 18 have one CP trouble ticket on each slide, meaning that sixteen CP trouble tickets are shown, one per slide.   This blog article discusses each of the sixteen trouble tickets in detail.  Continue reading “Detailed review of USPTO’s 18-slide deck about Patent Center”

Posted on

AIPLA again asks USPTO to postpone the shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web

Yesterday the AIPLA wrote a letter to the USPTO, reiterating its earlier request that the USPTO postpone its shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web from the presently scheduled date of November 8, 2023.  You can see the letter here.  Attached to AIPLA’s letter was an extra copy of AIPLA’s July 28, 2023 slide presentation.  Continue reading “AIPLA again asks USPTO to postpone the shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web”

Posted on

What happens when USPTO fails to answer letters or respond to emails or return telephone calls about Patent Center

In a previous blog article I recounted some of the many times that the patent community has sent letters to the USPTO leadership about Patent Center that have gone unanswered, and has sent emails to the USPTO leadership about Patent Center that have gone without response, and has left telephone messages to the USPTO leadership about Patent Center that were never returned.  What happens next, I asked.  Here are three things that have happened since then, to try to bring about some change at the USPTO about Patent Center:

  • A first letter got sent on September 29, 2023 from One Hundred Seventy-Eight Members of the Patent Center Listserv to the Inspector General at the Department of Commerce.  This became the Inspector General’s complaint number 23-0900.  The Inspector General wrote:

    The IG has requested that management officials at the USPTO conduct a thorough and independent inquiry and provide a response to the IG, including a detailed explanation of their review process and any corrective action, if any, they take as a result.

  • A letter got sent on October 9, 2023 from  137 intellectual property professionals to the Office of Management and Budget, invoking OMB’s responsibility to oversee the data-collection aspects of Patent Center.  It is discussed here.
  • A second letter got sent on October 15, 2023 from PTAARMIGAN to the Inspector General at the Department of Commerce.  This became the Inspector General’s complaint number 24-0055.  The Inspector General wrote:

    After careful consideration, we decided to refer your allegations(s) [sic] to management officials at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and requested that they merge this complaint with another related matter. We have requested that they conduct a thorough and independent inquiry and provide a response to us, including a detailed explanation of their review process and any corrective action, if any, they take as a result.

Posted on

USPTO fails to handle EBC trouble tickets about Patent Center

(Update:  we wrote to Commissioner for Patents Udupa about the open-or-closed status of these fifteen EBC tickets on October 12, 2023 (see email).  We have sent a followup letter to the Commissioner and hopefully we will hear back from her.)

The USPTO claims to listen to users who report bugs in Patent Center.  The USPTO says that one of the ways that a user can report a bug in Patent Center is to open a trouble ticket with the Electronic Business Center.

Here are fifteen EBC trouble tickets which users of Patent Center opened, reporting bugs in Patent Center.  In this table, each EBC ticket number is listed along with the corresponding CP ticket number on the Patent Center trouble ticket list, and along with the date of creation of the trouble ticket.

The USPTO is disingenuous when it pretends that reporting Patent Center bugs to the EBC supposedly works.  Never, not even once, has any Patent Center user who opened a trouble ticket about Patent Center with the EBC ever heard back from the EBC with any progress or resolution for the bug that was being reported.  The USPTO never got back to any of these fifteen Patent Center users.

EBC ticket number CP ticket number creation date
1-690814254 CP16 May 4, 2020
1-695641646 CP30 June 8, 2020
1-701563481 CP33 July 5, 2020
1-761431662 CP55 June 14, 2021
1-761431662 CP56 June 14, 2021
1-823950504 CP63 October 22, 2021
1-839307926 CP69 December 3, 2021
1-783509075 CP71 December 8, 2021
1-826155667 CP103 March 13, 2023
1-827293068 CP127 March 28, 2023
1-828414131 CP135 March 30, 2023
1-830635911 CP139 May 18, 2023
1-831159389 CP140 May 25, 2023
1-831173674 CP141 May 25, 2023
1-838522518 CP148 August 29, 2023
1-836237428 CP160 September 30, 2023
Posted on

Another USPTO person will join the face-to-face Patent Center meeting

Hello readers.  Yesterday you learned (blog article) that a face-to-face meeting has been scheduled between USPTO people and representatives of the Patent Center listserv.  It will take place on Wednesday, October 18.  What prompted this meeting are the concerns that were raised in the letter dated September 29, 2023 from One Hundred Seventy-Eight Members of the Patent Center Listserv to USPTO Director Kathi Vidal.

As of yesterday the attendee list was as follows.

From the USPTO:

    • Vaishali Udupa (Commissioner for Patents)
    • Richard Seidel (Deputy Commissioner for Patents)
    • Greg Vidovich (Assistant Commissioner for Patents)
    • Terrel Morris (Director, Office of Information Technology for Patents)
    • Kimberly Williams (OITP)
    • Patricia Mallari (Special Advisor for Patents)
    • Steven Griffin (Senior Advisor at USPTO)

Representing the Patentcenter listserv:

    • Carl Oppedahl
    • Richard Schafer
    • Suzannah Sundby

Today we have learned of a small change in the attendee list.  On the listserv side the attendee list remains the same.  But see if you can spot the change in the attendee list on the USPTO side:

    • Kathi Vidal (Director of the USPTO)
    • Vaishali Udupa (Commissioner for Patents)
    • Richard Seidel (Deputy Commissioner for Patents)
    • Greg Vidovich (Assistant Commissioner for Patents)
    • Terrel Morris (Director, Office of Information Technology for Patents)
    • Kimberly Williams (OITP)
    • Patricia Mallari (Special Advisor for Patents)
    • Steven Griffin (Senior Advisor at USPTO)