Avoiding having to translate two documents into English

A question came in from a good friend:

A client from a non-US country wants to enter the United States at the end of the PCT which was filed in a non-English language. He is working on a CIP but won’t have it ready until another few months. He would like to try and avoid the cost of a double translation. Can you think of a way for him to enter into the US at the end of the 30 months with the non-English language version, and somehow avoid having to translate that application, and then in a few months when he has the CIP ready here he will file that in the US and translate that one into English. My concern is that without filing an English translation of the first application, is he able to get somehow a valid US filing date?

Here’s what I think the answer is. Continue reading “Avoiding having to translate two documents into English”

Most popular page on OPLF’s web site?

There are several hundred pages on the web site of Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC at https://www.oppedahl.com/.  For the first time in some months I clicked around a bit in our visitor statistics, and found that one particular page on our law firm web site is ten times more popular than any other page on our law firm web site.  (I am talking about www.oppedahl.com here, not blog.oppedahl.com.) Continue reading “Most popular page on OPLF’s web site?”

I folded on the specimen rejection

olf-specimenReaders will recall my posting on July 21 in which I complained about the USPTO’s post-registration division bouncing a specimen in the renewal of my own trademark registration.  I was trying to do an 8-and-15 for my mark “OPLF”.  The services were all drawn from the ID Manual, and it seemed to me that the words “Patent Attorney” on the card made clear that I was providing patent attorney services.  But that’s not how post-reg saw it.  The way they saw it, the business card supposedly failed to “reference” the services.  They bounced the specimen. Continue reading “I folded on the specimen rejection”

USPTO can’t say it wasn’t warned about its Java applet problem

It is astonishing that even now, in August of 2015, despite many warnings and requests from users over the span of several years, USPTO has not scrapped its Java applet.  By this I mean the Entrust Java applet whichchrome USPTO forces customers to use to authenticate their logins at Private PAIR and EFS-Web.  The most recent reminder of all of this is USPTO’s oddly worded “Third Notice”, an email alert on August 18, 2015 from the USPTO warning customers that time is running out for users of Chrome browsers.  In September of 2015 (that is, during the next month) Chrome will stop supporting Java, meaning that users of Chrome will no longer be able to log in at Private PAIR or EFS-Web.

Until now I had sort of thought of Chrome as a relative newcomer among web browsers, and I had sort of assumed that most people still use Firefox and Microsoft Internet Exploder.  Which got me wondering, how many USPTO customers use Chrome anyway?  Continue reading “USPTO can’t say it wasn’t warned about its Java applet problem”

No outgoing correspondence from USPTO this week?

Over on the patent practitioner’s listserv, alert listserv member Judith Szepesi asked:

I usually get 1-2 things via eOffice Action every day.  I haven’t gotten any emails in the last week.  Not a single one.  Logging in, the last item on PAIR Outgoing Correspondence has a mail room date of August 11, 2015.  I don’t think I have had a break this long since I set up the eOffice Action emails.  Is it just me?

Continue reading “No outgoing correspondence from USPTO this week?”

What it costs to get a US application on the Patent Prosecution Highway?

Previously I blogged about what it might cost to get a US application examined fast on Track I and by Accelerated Examination and by an old-fashioned Petition to Make Special and under Rule 496.  Now let’s talk a bit about what it might cost to get a US application examined fast on the Patent Prosecution Highway. Continue reading “What it costs to get a US application on the Patent Prosecution Highway?”