On May 3, 2023, I urged you (blog article) to attend a webinar presented by two partners in the Fitch Even law firm, entitled Terrifying Tales of the USPTO’s DOCX Filing System. Hopefully you attended that webinar.
But if you missed the live webinar, the good news is that Terrifying Tales of the USPTO’s DOCX Filing System is now available as a recording. To view the recording, click here.
You can also view recordings (click here) of my two recent webinars on the malpractice risks associated with use of the USPTO’s DOCX e-filing system.
Here is a letter that I sent today to the Director and the Commissioner:
Hello Director Vidal and Commissioner Udupa and Deputy Commissioner Seidel:
By now there have been many webinars scheduled and presented that are intended to help the patent community understand the risks of filing US patent applications using the USPTO’s DOCX initiative. These include:
Patent Center DOCX Filing: What you Need to Know, March 10, 2023, Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner
Professional Liability Risks of Filing in DOCX – for users of Microsoft Word, April 18, 2023, Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC
Professional Liability Risks of Filing in DOCX – for users of non-Microsoft word processors, April 18, 2023, Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC
Professional Liability Risks of Filing in DOCX – for users of Microsoft Word, May 10, 2023, Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC
Professional Liability Risks of Filing in DOCX – for users of non-Microsoft word processors, May 12, 2023, Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC
Terrifying Tales of the USPTO’s DOCX Filing System, May 23, 2023, Fitch Even
You can see the May 10 recording here (1:29 in length) and you can download the presentation materials here.
I invite you and request you to let me know if you think there were any factual inaccuracies in the May 10 webinar. If there were any inaccuracies in that webinar, I will publish corrections.
Hello readers! On Wednesday, May 10, 2023 I presented a webinar about the malpractice risks of e-filing a patent application in DOCX format under the USPTO’s DOCX initiative, for those who use Microsoft Word. On Friday, May 12, 2023 I presented a webinar about the malpractice risks of e-filing a patent application in DOCX format under the USPTO’s DOCX initiative, for those who use non-Microsoft word processors.
The webinars got recorded, and the recordings have now been edited into usable format for later viewing. You can see the May 10 recording here (1:29 in length) and you can download the presentation materials here. You can see the May 12 recording here (1:10 in length) and you can download the presentation materials here.
Hello readers! On Wednesday, May 10, 2023 I presented a webinar about the malpractice risks of e-filing a patent application in DOCX format under the USPTO’s DOCX initiative. The webinar got recorded, and the recording has now been edited into usable format for later viewing. You can see the recording here and you can download the presentation materials here. (Update: the recording of the May 12 webinar is also now available.)
Those who are considering filing a patent application at the USPTO in DOCX should inform themselves of the professional liability risks of doing so. A first way to learn about this is to watch recordings of my recent webinars about this. A second way will be to attend Terrifying Tales of the USPTO’s DOCX Filing System, presented by two partners in the Fitch Even law firm. The webinar, which is free of charge, will take place on May 23. To find out more about that webinar, or to register, click here.
I can’t figure out how I missed this! If you can satisfy fourteen conditions as a first-time patent application filer at the USPTO, you can get your patent application examined faster. Continue reading “First-time filer expedited examination”
The USPTO has by now presented over 145 webinars, by now every two days or so, containing pants-on-fire lies about “the DOCX standard” and how safe it supposedly is to file US patent applications according to the USPTO’s DOCX initiative. As of the present time, USPTO’s stated plan is to start charging a $400 surcharge on June 30, 2023 for those filers who fail to use the DOCX initiative. As you can see here, many members of the patent filing community feel that the USPTO has not done a good job of communicating pros and cons for an applicant or practitioner when e-filing in DOCX format.
I presented two webinars recently about the professional liability risks of filing in DOCX. You might wonder whether the people who attended the webinar on April 18, 2023 think that you should attend the upcoming webinars? The answer is “yes”. You can see their evaluation questionnaire answers here.
Recently I presented two webinars (blog article) about the professional liability risks of e-filing using the USPTO’s DOCX e-filing system. (Recordings of the two webinars are now available.) The first-day webinar was for users of Microsoft Word, and the second-day webinar was for users of non-Microsoft word processors. After each webinar, an evaluation questionnaire was sent to the attendees. Here are some of the evaluation results from the April 18 webinar. Continue reading “How did attendees evaluate the April 18 DOCX webinar?”
Recently I presented two webinars (blog article) about the professional liability risks of e-filing using the USPTO’s DOCX e-filing system. The first-day webinar was for users of Microsoft Word, and the second-day webinar was for users of non-Microsoft word processors. During the webinars I did some attendee polling and here are the results.
Summary: For me the most striking polling result was that nearly all respondents felt that the USPTO has not done a good job of communicating pros and cons for a practitioner when e-filing in DOCX format. The answers were:
Yes – 1.5% and zero percent
No – 94% and 89%
Not sure – 5% and 11%
Now of course one might imagine some selection bias given that the respondents are people who chose to attend these webinars. And at the time of the polling the respondents had just heard half an hour of discussion of professional risks of the USPTO DOCX e-filing system. On the other hand, by now the USPTO has presented over one hundred forty-five webinars telling applicants and practitioners that DOCX filing is safe, and is better than PDF filing.
Details: Here are the detailed polling results.
Have you done any DOCX filings at the USPTO?
First-day attendees said this:
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Second-day attendees said this:
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What are your plans about doing DOCX filings in the future at the USPTO?
First-day attendees said this:
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Second-day attendees said this:
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Do you feel that the USPTO has done a good job of communicating pros and cons for a practitioner when e-filing in DOCX format?
First-day attendees said this:
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Second-day attendees said this:
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Have you experienced conversion problems with your DOCX filings?
First-day attendees said this:
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Second-day attendees said this:
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What I find most striking is the percentage of DOCX filers (21% and 13%) who report that they don’t know if there have been conversion problems because they don’t check for it.
What word processors are sometimes involved with your US patent applications? (check as many as apply)
Second-day attendees said this:
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And they also said this:
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So the word processor types that were reported as being involved with patent application drafting, in descending order, were:
78% – Microsoft Office 265
71% – local installation of Microsoft Word or Office
52% – Microsoft Word 2004 or older
29% – Wordperfect
24% – LaTex or Tex
24% – Office Online
20% – Google Docs
11% – Libre Office (and Open Office and Collabra Office)
The USPTO has by now presented at least one hundred forty-five webinarsurging applicants and practitioners to e-file their US patent applications in DOCX format instead of PDF format. This has amounted to more than six webinars per month in the past 24 months (see graph at right). To promote these webinars, the USPTO has carried out at least fifty email blasts amounting, I imagine, to well over half a million outbound email messages. What is USPTO’s success rate at convincing applicants and practitioners to switch from PDF to DOCX? Continue reading “How successful have USPTO’s DOCX training webinars been?”
On May 3, 2023, I urged you (blog article) to attend a webinar presented by two partners in the Fitch Even law firm, entitled Terrifying Tales of the USPTO’s DOCX Filing System. Hopefully you attended that webinar.
