Save the date! The next PCT Seminar will be September 22-24, 2026 near the Denver airport.
“the only other thing I can recommend is just use Word” – EBC advice
Well, the unspoken thing has just been spoken. “The only other thing I can recommend is just use [Microsoft] Word.”
Continue reading ““the only other thing I can recommend is just use Word” – EBC advice”
USPTO’s non-DOCX surcharge rears its ugly head again
(Update: 23 hours have passed since I opened ticket number 2-01001251 about Patent Center puking on a patent application prepared in Libre Office. Nobody from the USPTO got back to me during these 23 hours. Tomorrow is the priority date on which I need to get this patent application filed. I phoned up the EBC again just now, and was told “the only other thing I can recommend is just use [Microsoft] Word.” See followup blog article.)
The USPTO’s non-DOCX surcharge is now rearing its ugly head again. Let’s see if, between now and tomorrow, May 15, 2026, the USPTO people in charge of the non-DOCX penalty provide decent software support for the filing of a new patent application that was prepared using a word processor that is not Microsoft Word. Watch this blog to see how the USPTO handles this defect in Patent Center. Continue reading “USPTO’s non-DOCX surcharge rears its ugly head again”
PCT training in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 13
Are you attending the AIPLA Spring 2026 meeting at the San Francisco Fairmont hotel? If so, I invite you to attend some PCT training on Wednesday, May 13 from 4PM to 6PM in the French Room. Your presenters are Hanna Kang from WIPO and yours truly. We will talk about two topics:
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- choosing a Receiving Office, and
- choosing an International Searching Authority.
The training is sponsored by the PCT Issues Committee.
Here are the presentation slides for “choosing an ISA”.
The 2025 intellectual property toteboards have been posted
It is my honor to post:
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- the fourteenth annual US Design Patent Toteboard,
- the eleventh annual US Trademark Registration Toteboard,
- the eleventh annual US Utility Patent Toteboard, and
- the seventh annual US Plant Patent Toteboard.
You can see them here.
Good news for those who use ISA/EP and IPEA/EP
What we see today is some new 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”
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?”
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
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:
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- 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?”