(Update: USPTO leadership has, indeed, taken corrective action (blog article).)
It crosses my mind that this kind of thing with the EBC telling people that Patent Center is not ready (see blog article) will very likely lead to a corrective action by USPTO leadership. No, I do not mean that USPTO leadership will postpone the shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web (now planned for November 8) until Patent Center is “ready”. Nor do I mean that USPTO leadership will actually do the hard work of making Patent Center “ready” between now and November 8. I mean that a memo will get circulated to the representatives at the EBC, telling them that between now and November 8, no user is to be told that the workaround for a Patent Center bug is to “use PAIR instead” or “use EFS-Web instead”.
I think the EBC is having problems fielding calls already. Last time I called the main line they had over 400 calls ahead of me and I had to try other numbers to speak to someone. I expect that once EFS-Web and Private PAIR are disabled, the number of calls will triple–no, quadruple.
All the rush to get this PC operational without any backup for a defective product seems to be by design, that is, they want it that way, but they can’t make it too obvious so the PC has to be functional enough (most of the time), but not 100% functional that users will not experience any problems, some of which might prevent filings/submissions causing missed deadlines, inaccurate Word document conversions, etc. Of course, the USPTO will blame the user and not take responsibility so we’ll need to document everything all the time to keep as evidence.
This is a True Story.
Years ago the City of San Jose instituted a recycling program and homeowners were given special bins for their recyclables.
One day a reporter from the San Jose Mercury News followed the recycling truck to see where it went.
It went to the landfill where it dumped all of the “recyclables”.
The San Jose City Council said, “That is outrageous”.
So they quickly enacted a new ordinance making it a misdemeanor to follow a recycling truck.
BTW, sometimes the garbage company would refuse to pick up one or more of my recycling bins but they never left me a note explaining which Recycling Commandment I had broken.
Any comparison of the Patent Office to a garbage company are purely intentional.
As a result of the AIA, the many bad decisions of the courts, and the actions of the Patent Office itself (remember SAWS?) the Patent Office is so broken that it no longer fulfills the Constitutional mandate that authorized its creation.
At this point the most rational solution is to shut down the Patent Office and go to a Patent Registration system handled by the Copyright Office.
Great story about the recycling program! However, even with its flaws, I much prefer Patent Center and the Patent Office’s responsiveness over that of the Copyright Office. At least once I jump through the USPTO hoops, I get an assigned examiner with a name who I can talk to on the phone. The Copyright Office doesn’t provide good channels of communication (no names or phone numbers), and you better hope that their email isn’t caught in your spam filter, because they won’t contact you again until after the time to respond has expired.
Maybe we could get the courts to rule like they did in this case against the CPSC brought by the Window Covering manufacturers Association… (although the switch to Patent Center may not be seen as “rule making”?)
https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/F7EB0322DF8099DC85258A28004F2502/%24file/22-1300-2016387.pdf