For the patent practitioner who represents clients whose patent applications get rejected over Section 101, some new tools have recently been added to the practitioner’s toolbox that might help with overcoming the rejections. Continue reading “Recent tools added to the Section-101 toolbox”
Unacceptable USPTO delays in forwarding responses to Examiners
We have a case in Technology Center 2100 in which we responded to a non-final Office Action on September 15, 2025.
Normally such a response would have gotten forwarded to the Examiner (by the LIE) within two or three business days.
In this case it got forwarded to the Examiner on January 16, 2026. Yes, it took more than four months for the LIE to do the one or two mouse clicks required to place the response onto the desk of the Examiner.
Four months. Not acceptable. Continue reading “Unacceptable USPTO delays in forwarding responses to Examiners”
Yet another round of sanctions for using AI-hallucinated case citations
Here is a sanctions order in a patent litigation case in federal district court in Kansas. Several lawyers permitted their names to appear in a signature block of a brief. The brief contained a citation to a non-existent case. The brief cited multiple cases for saying things that they did not say. How did the judge choose the magnitude of sanction to be imposed on each of the lawyers? Continue reading “Yet another round of sanctions for using AI-hallucinated case citations”
It’s time to get in your numbers for the 2025 toteboards
Hello readers. It is now 2026 and this means it is time to get in your numbers for the 2025 toteboards:
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- click here to get in your numbers for the Fourteenth Annual US design patent toteboard
- click here to get in your numbers for the Eleventh Annual US utility patent toteboard
- click here to get in your numbers for the Seventh Annual US plant patent toteboard
- click here to get in your numbers for the Eleventh Annual US trademark toteboard
The goal is to recognize and rank law firms in the US based upon the numbers of US design patents, US utility patents, US plant patents, and US trademark registrations each firm obtained for clients in 2025.
The questionnaires will close on Friday, February 13, 2026.
Here is a page suggesting how you might obtain these numbers.
Every year after I post the results of the toteboards, I get sad emails from firms that want me to accept their numbers late. This would, of course, typically result in kicking other firms down in the rankings — other firms that got their numbers in on time. Please help to reduce the number of such sad emails that I will receive this year. Maybe you are a person at your firm who is responsible for getting these numbers in. If so, please get your numbers in! Otherwise, please forward this blog posting to somebody at your firm to make sure that somebody at your firm gets the numbers in for your firm.
You can see the previous toteboards here, going back to the earliest toteboard in 2012.
What to do if your email service provider has been bouncing our listserv postings
In recent days, our email server for our listservs may have removed your email address from membership in one or another of the listservs. Assuming that you did not want this, what should you do? Continue reading “What to do if your email service provider has been bouncing our listserv postings”
Should the listserv member click on the link? Is it spearphishing?
Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC (“OPLF”) sponsors many listservs (email discussion groups for intellectual property professionals, here is a list of them), some with over a thousand members. In recent days, hundreds of members of the listservs have started to receive email messages that prompted questions, such as:
I received an email, and I need to know whether it is a phishing hack. If it’s legitimate, I will respond accordingly.
Another listserv member responded:
Got same thing yesterday. Is real. The question is why.
What do these emails mean? Why are the listserv members receiving the emails? How should listserv members respond? In this blog posting, I try to answer these questions. Continue reading “Should the listserv member click on the link? Is it spearphishing?”
USPTO’s Patent Center says: “There was an error”
I was paying an Issue Fee in Patent Center, I clicked “submit”, and at right you can see what happened next. “There was an error”.
That’s it. The developers of Patent Center want me to know that “There was an error.”
Well, now I know. There was an error.
What really deserves comment here is the state of mind of the developers when they designed this error message. Somebody somewhere at the USPTO, when they were coding this line of code, said “well, I guess I need to choose the text of this error message.” And this person decided that the way to explain what had gone wrong was to use these four words.
You could ask a twelve-year-old child “is this an acceptable error message?” and the child would say “no it is not”. Continue reading “USPTO’s Patent Center says: “There was an error””
Listservs seem to be back in service
Hello listserv colleagues! I think the listservs are more or less back in service. But for about 30% of our listserv members, the member’s email service provider (ESP) is blocking our postings as spam. If you are in that 30%, I urge you to direct your ESP to stop the blocking. This may include whitelisting the new IP address or speaking frankly with your ESP.
And if you posted anything to any of the listservs since about December 21, I am sorry to say you will probably need to repost it.
It took a lot of my professional time to deal with this. And the hosting service will cost a bit more in perpetuity. I will gladly receive donations to help support this, as detailed below.
Details follow. Continue reading “Listservs seem to be back in service”
USPTO backdates outgoing correspondence
Today (Christmas Day, December 25, 2025) the USPTO for the first time emailed outgoing correspondence notifications (OCNs, shown at right) for three pieces of outgoing patent correspondence that have been backdated to December 23, 2025.
Which commercial e-signature platforms does the USPTO recognize?
On March 22, 2024 the USPTO published a Federal Register Notice saying that the USPTO would start accepting electronic signatures generated by some commercial e-signature platforms without any requirement that virgules (forward slashes) be incorporated into the e-signature. You can see, at right, an e-signature generated by one particular commercial e-signature platform. If you were to e-file the document quoted at right, would the USPTO bounce it or accept it? In this blog article I discuss in detail the various USPTO communications to try to work out the answer. Spoiler alert — it turns out to be impossible to know what the USPTO will and will not accept. Bigger spoiler alert — one assumes that TYFNIL this will be a fertile area for summary judgment practice and the like. Continue reading “Which commercial e-signature platforms does the USPTO recognize?”