The March 17 version of Patentcenter was clearly not tested before release. It breaks many things that worked properly in the pre-March 17 version. This has given rise to at least ten new trouble tickets in the Patentcenter Trouble Ticket page.
The most striking, perhaps, is the never-ending blink that you get if you use a browser that the Patentcenter developer did not test. See screen capture video. This is trouble ticket CP107 at the Patentcenter trouble ticket page.
The eTD web-based action refuses to accept any virgule signature that is longer than fifteen characters. This is ticket CP112.
The correspondence table lists “page 2 of 1”. This is ticket CP104.
The new version of Patentcenter is much less “restful”. Various links, if right-clicked upon and opened in a new window, fail to load. This is ticket CP105.
If an uploaded file has the misfortune to have any of several text strings in its file name, Patentcenter will refuse to allow the filer to edit the document description. This is ticket CP107.
The outgoing correspondence table in the new version of Patentcenter is far less “responsive” than in the previous version of Patentcenter. This is ticket CP109.
The filer who is filing a PCT application with a ZIP file is supposed to be able to pay a reduced filing fee. But the March 17 version of Patentcenter has stopped making this reduced filing fee available. Filers are told by the EBC to give up and use EFS-Web instead. This is ticket CP111.
If the uploaded file to the March 17 version of Patentcenter contains any of several text strings, Patentcenter will lock in a particular document description and will refuse to allow the user to edit it. This is ticket CP106.
Printing to PDF from the various tabs (application data, foreign priority, continuity) in the pre-March 17 version of Patentcenter worked correctly, and each PDF had its own distinct operating system file name. The March 17 version, however, tries to assign the exact same file name to each of the PDFs, and the result is that they overwrite one another. This is ticket CP113.
In the pre-March 17 version of Patentcenter, the user viewing the Continuity tab could copy the PCT application number and past it into other applications and documents. Now in the March 17 version, the PCT application number is now unavailable for copying. This is ticket CP114.
And why is the public search functionality disabled????
I created a user account as non-US practitioner (presumably worked), but the page wouldn’t load /behave erratically and throw me out each time I wanted to check the public register
Try entering URL,
https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/search
Got to hand it to the PTO for having the users best interests at heart!
The fee section does not work. After spending a long time on the phone with electronic business center and uploading my PCT application several times, I was told to go to EFS-WEB to pay my PCT fees.