I have consolidated the information about fees charged by DAS Depositing Offices here.
USPTO corrupts credit card expiration dates in FM
Hello folks. Here is a warning that I saw today in a USPTO system when I was paying a government fee in Financial Manager:
Credit/Debit Card Expiration Dates
Due to a recent system upgrade, some card expiration dates may have been converted to an incorrect month for cards stored within Financial Manager. …
Try to guess, dear reader, what the next few words were. For example, maybe the next few words explained that the USPTO was working to restore the expiration dates to their correct values, but that this might take a day or two, and they apologize for the inconvenience. Continue reading “USPTO corrupts credit card expiration dates in FM”
Filing at the International Bureau and Daylight Saving Time
It’s that time of year again. The time of year when it is important to keep track of the fact that Daylight Saving Time is different in Switzerland from the way it is in the United States. Continue reading “Filing at the International Bureau and Daylight Saving Time”
USPTO is now passive-aggressive about accessing from DAS
It is discouraging to see a recently increased level of passive-aggressiveness on the part of the USPTO about its role as an Accessing Office in the DAS system. This blog article briefly describes four ways in which the USPTO has recently started acting as if it wishes that the DAS system did not exist at all. Continue reading “USPTO is now passive-aggressive about accessing from DAS”
Brazil joins the Hague system
Brazil has joined the Hague system. Continue reading “Brazil joins the Hague system”
An annual ritual for me – scheduled postings about DST
Hello dear readers. There is an annual ritual which I keep hoping would eventually cease to be necessary, but yet again today the ritual presents itself. What I am talking about is the annual scheduling of four blog postings about Daylight Saving Time. Continue reading “An annual ritual for me – scheduled postings about DST”
The 2022 Toteboards are now published
The 2022 US utility patent, US design patent, US plant patent, and US trademark registration toteboards are now published. You can see them here:
I am grateful as always to the hundreds of firms that contributed their numbers to these toteboards.
Last day to get in your numbers for the 2022 toteboards!
Today is the last day to get in your numbers for the 2022 toteboards. Click here to get in your numbers.
Here is what we have so far:
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- For the US utility patent toteboard — over fifty firms responding, representing over thirty thousand issued US utility patents.
- For the US trademark registration toteboard — over fifty firms responding, representing over ten thousand granted US trademark registrations.
- For the US design patent toteboard — over forty firms responding, representing over four thousand issued US design patents.
- For the US plant patent toteboard — over three firms responding, representing over twenty-five US plant patents.
Get your numbers in. The response forms will stop taking responses at the close of business today, Tuesday, January 24, 2023.
Some firms have gotten in their numbers for the 2022 toteboards
The 2022 toteboards will get published in February of 2023. Every year, we publish the toteboards, and after that, some firm comes in begging and pleading to hand in its numbers late. Please don’t do that. Please hand in your numbers before Tuesday, January 24, 2023!
As of just now, lots of firms have already handed in their numbers for the 2022 toteboards: Continue reading “Some firms have gotten in their numbers for the 2022 toteboards”
Incremental progress on finding ways to use Patent Public Search
Folks, I have experimented quite a bit in the past 24 hours, trying to figure out a bit more about how to trick the clunky Patent Public Search system into yielding up answers for the 2022 toteboards. Here are my bits of incremental progress on ways to trick the PPS search system into giving you numbers that you might be able to use for the toteboards.
The date search portion of the search. To get patents issuing in calendar 2022, it looks like either of these search strings might work:
@PD>=”20220101″<=20221231
or
“2022”.py.
The latter is a smaller character count and is easier to type without error. Maybe it executes faster in the PPS system.
The application type or patent type portion of the search. To get, say, only utility patents, it looks like this might work:
(b1.AT. or b2.AT.)
This search string tries to get issued US utility patents that did not have a previous publication (B1) merged with issued US utility patents that did have a previous publication (B2).
To get, say, only plant patents, it looks like this might work:
(p2.at. or p3.at.)
This search string tries to get issued US plant patents that did not have a previous publication (P2) merged with issued US plant patents that did have a previous publication (P3).
To get, say, only design patents, it looks like this might work:
s.AT.
Recapping progress thus far. Thus for example if you want to know simply how many utility patents issued in 2022, it looks like this might work:
(b1.AT. or b2.AT.) and “2022”.py.
The answer seems to be 322992 issued utility patents in 2022.
The number of design patents might work with this:
s.AT. and “2022”.py.
The answer seems to be 34158 issued design patents in 2022.
The number of plant patents might work with this:
(p2.AT. or p3.AT.) and “2022”.py.
The answer seems to be 1072 issued plant patents in 2022.
Narrowing it down to the firm name. We can then use any of the previous three search strings along with further field searching to try to narrow the search down to the firm name. The poor documentation for PPS suggests that any of the following might possibly yield legal-representative-specific results:
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- .att. – said to mean “Attorney/agent/firm”
- .atty. – said to mean “Attorney name”
- .firm. – said to mean “Legal Firm Name”
- .inaa. – said to mean “Legal Representative or Inventor”
- .lrag. – said to mean “Legal Representative Name”
- .lrnm. – said to mean “Legal Representative Name”
- .lrfm. – said to mean “Legal Firm Name”
Within any one of these fields, the hapless searcher might want to try any of several proximity operators: ADJ, ADJ(n), NEAR, NEAR(n), WITH, WITH(n), SAME, or SAME(n). Some searchers will try AND within a field search. Toteboard searchers have tried strings including:
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- (plinge AND llp).att.
- baker adj charlie.lrfm.
- (able and charlie).lrfm
Yes, it looks like you can omit the parentheses because I guess “ADJ” binds more strongly than the field name.
For our firm, the following search strings seemed to work:
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- oppedahl.att. (“Attorney/agent/firm”)
- oppedahl.atty. (“Attorney name”)
- oppedahl.firm. (“Legal Firm Name”)
- oppedahl.lrfm. (“Legal Firm Name”)
The following search strings came up empty:
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- oppedahl.inaa. (“Legal Representative or Inventor”)
- oppedahl.lrag. (“Legal Representative Name”)
- oppedahl.lrnm. (“Legal Representative Name”)
One firm tried a search like this:
(((“Plinge Patent Law”).firm. OR (“Plinge Patent Law”).inaa. OR (“Plinge Patent Law”).lrag. OR (“Plinge Patent Law”).lrnm. OR (“Plinge Patent Law”).lrfm. )
Part of what the firm was doing, I guess, was trying to get the benefit of any of the search fields that might possibly work (inaa, lrag, and so on). Another part of what the firm was doing, I guess, was to put three words of the firm name into quotation marks, to try to exclude nuisance hits from other firms with somewhat similar firm names.