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.
Both of the “archived” links lead to the AIPLA letter. Neither lead to David Boundy’s letter.
I am a software engineer working on my first application using the book “Patent it Yourself”. Boundy’s analysis is so obviously correct that USPTO’s failure to reverse their incoherent design reminds me of how the “Office of circumlocution” in Dickens’ “Little Dorrit” harassed an innocent inventor.
As a Micro entity, it’s only 80 bucks PDF surcharge so I’ve decided, based on Boundy’s cogent analysis, it’s well worth that to avoid the uncertainty.
Kudos to Boundy and the other 122. Hope USPTO will see reason.