You’ve received the scary emails from USPTO, and the scary pop-up messages in PAIR, saying that “you will need to use a newer, safer, and simpler log-in … beginning in October 2018”.
There are some things that you really need to do now (if you have not already done so) if you are a USPTO patent practitioner. Each human being in your office needs to get a MyUSPTO user ID and password (if he or she has not already done so). Each human being in your office needs to set up TOTP with that user ID (if he or she has not already done so). And you need to attend some upcoming webinars in which USPTO will try to explain all of this very clearly.
I’ll explain.
The first thing about all of this is that it will be recalled that I blogged about this back on June 1, 2018. So you’ve had more than three months to get this done.
Anyway now is the time to redouble your efforts in this area, and for every human being in your office to redouble his or her efforts in this area.
USPTO has a web page Authentication Change Coming for EFS-Web and PAIR where they talk about this.
USPTO is conducting three webinars to try to explain these things. The first webinar, called “Overview”, was scheduled twice. You already missed one of the scheduled times for the “Overview” webinar — it was last week on September 20. The one remaining time for “Overview” is this coming Wednesday, September 26 at 2PM Eastern Time. You need to sign up for that webinar, and you should sign up right now.
The second webinar is called “Migration Details”. This webinar will be presented two times:
- Thursday, October 11, at 2PM Eastern Time
- Thursday, October 25, at noon Eastern Time
You need to sign up for the October 11 session or the October 25 session, and you should sign up right now.
The third webinar is called “Sponsorship Details”. This webinar will be presented four times:
- Thursday, November 15 at 2PM Eastern Time
- Tuesday, November 27 at noon Eastern Time
- Thursday, December 6 at 2PM Eastern Time
- Wednesday, December 19 at noon Eastern Time
You need to sign up for one of those four sessions, and you should sign up right now.
Carl, I think the Sponsorship webinars will cover everything. Right now, the PTO hasn’t announced how migration and sponsorship will work, and they won’t have announced Sponsorship information by the time of the 10/11 and 10/25 talks. So I intend to sign up for the third set of webinars, to get the whole picture at once.