Attendee polling responses from the DOCX webinars

Recently I presented two webinars (blog article) about the professional liability risks of e-filing using the USPTO’s DOCX e-filing system.   The first-day webinar was for users of Microsoft Word, and the second-day webinar was for users of non-Microsoft word processors.  During the webinars I did some attendee polling and here are the results.

Summary:   For me the most striking polling result was that nearly all respondents felt that the USPTO has not done a good job of communicating pros and cons for a practitioner when e-filing in DOCX format.  The answers were:

• • Yes – 1.5% and zero percent
  • No – 94% and 89%
  • Not sure – 5% and 11%

Now of course one might imagine some selection bias given that the respondents are people who chose to attend these webinars.  And at the time of the polling the respondents had just heard half an hour of discussion of professional risks of the USPTO DOCX e-filing system.  On the other hand, by now the USPTO has presented over one hundred forty-five webinars telling applicants and practitioners that DOCX filing is safe, and is better than PDF filing.

Details:  Here are the detailed polling results.

Have you done any DOCX filings at the USPTO?

First-day attendees said this:

Second-day attendees said this:

What are your plans about doing DOCX filings in the future at the USPTO?

First-day attendees said this:

Second-day attendees said this:

Do you feel that the USPTO has done a good job of communicating pros and cons for a practitioner when e-filing in DOCX format?

First-day attendees said this:

Second-day attendees said this:

Have you experienced conversion problems with your DOCX filings?

First-day attendees said this:

Second-day attendees said this:

What I find most striking is the percentage of DOCX filers (21% and 13%) who report that they don’t know if there have been conversion problems because they don’t check for it.

What word processors are sometimes involved with your US patent applications? (check as many as apply)

Second-day attendees said this:

And they also said this:

So the word processor types that were reported as being involved with patent application drafting, in descending order, were:

• • 78% – Microsoft Office 265
  • 71% – local installation of Microsoft Word or Office
  • 52% – Microsoft Word 2004 or older
  • 29% – Wordperfect
  • 24% – LaTex or Tex
  • 24% – Office Online
  • 20% – Google Docs
  • 11% – Libre Office (and Open Office and Collabra Office)
  • 5% – Pages for Mac
  • 19% – other

Recordings of the webinars are now available for viewing.