(Update: The letter has been sent. See here.)
Hello readers. If one of the things that you do for a living is filing patent applications at the USPTO, then I urge you to take a look at two documents:
- a Federal Register notice dated April 28, 2022 entitled Filing Patent Applications in DOCX Format (87 FR 25226), and
- a letter to the USPTO, that is waiting for your signature, explaining what is wrong with that Federal Register notice.
Please consider signing the letter.
Thank you.
Carl
Thank you Carl for Organizing this. I appreciate all the work you do to advocate for the community of patent practitioners.
I was an early adopter of DOCX filing. My experience with DOCX has been less than stellar. On one application alone, it took five calls to the Application Assistance Unit and Electronic Business Center to resolve a serious error caused by bugs in the software that the USPTO uses to parse the DOCX file.