Category: non-DOCX penalty

The USPTO blinked yet again yesterday on DOCX.  The bad things that the USPTO was planning to do starting April 3, 2023 have now been postponed to June 30, 2023, according to USPTO speakers during a DOCX propaganda webinar yesterday.  At above right is a screen grab by alert listserv member Michael Dryja of a presentation slide during the webinar.  Continue reading “Status of DOCX initiative as of right now redux”

(Update:  the USPTO has blinked a third time about its $400 non-DOCX penalty.)

In this blog article, I will describe the status of the USPTO’s DOCX initiative as of today.  What I describe here is how it is going to get worse for patent applicants and patent practitioners over the next few months, absent the USPTO choosing to “blink” again and perhaps postpone some of the bad things that are imminent.  Continue reading “Status of DOCX initiative as of right now”

The USPTO appears to be digging in its heels on DOCX.   The USPTO published a Federal Register notice on December 29, 2022 entitled Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees During Fiscal Year 2020 (click here to see it) that provided an email contact.  On February 3, 2023 I wrote to the email contact, asking that my document The Fool’s Errand That Is DOCX (click here to see it) be placed in the rulemaking record.  He wrote back saying this:

Thank you for your message.
In accordance with Office Policy, I have not opened the attachment.

I wrote back the same day, saying:

Dear Mr Polutta —
You mention an “Office Policy.”  Could you please provide a cite or URL where it’s published?

I never heard back from him about this.  So I guess he was refusing to place the document into the rulemaking record in response to my email message.

So I guess there is no choice but to send it to him on paper, so as to eliminate the excuse of it having been an email attachment.  That is what I did today (click here to see what I sent).  Let’s hope that now he might place this document into the rulemaking record.

It is completely sensible for a patent office to be interested in receiving characters rather than images when a patent application is being filed.  There is the potential for everyone to benefit from successful submission of characters.  But DOCX is not (and never can be) the right way to do it, since DOCX fails as a way to communicate patent applications reliably or accurately.  See for example the letter that 82 patent practitioners sent to USPTO Director Vidal on December 28, 2022 urging her to read my paper called The Fools’ Errand that is DOCX.   I recently gave another attempt to filing a patent application using DOCX, and this time, one of the “DOCX fails” was that a Greek letter “μ” became an “m”.  Continue reading “Trusting DOCX? Greek letter μ just became an m”

As things stand right now, the USPTO’s stated plan is to proceed with its $400 penalty, starting April 3, 2023, for filers who decline to take the professional liability risks of filing in the DOCX way that the USPTO has prescribed.  It will be recalled (blog article) that on February 1, 2023, five representatives of the EFS-Web and Patentcenter listserv communities met in a videoconference with some USPTO people with a goal of deflecting the USPTO from some of the imminent harmful aspects of its DOCX initiative.  (The USPTO limited the videoconference to 30 minutes.)  We sent a thank-you letter to the USPTO shortly thereafter.

After that, we reviewed our notes from the videoconference and realized that  USPTO’s apparent plans were worse than we fully appreciated during the 30-minute video conference.  We realized that more needed to be said to the USPTO.  Today we sent a followup letter.  Continue reading “Another letter to the USPTO about its DOCX initiative”

(An important followup letter got sent on February 14, 2023 to the USPTO — see blog article.)

Readers, I am delighted to be able to report what looks like a bit of progress by the USPTO, away from some of the bad parts of its DOCX initiative.  A meeting took place on February 1, 2023 with some representatives of the patent practitioner listserv committee.  You can read about the meeting below.  Continue reading “Maybe some USPTO progress away from bad parts of its DOCX initiative”

Hello readers.  You will recall (blog article of December 27, 2022) that the practitioner community was invited to sign a letter to USPTO Director Vidal.  The letter urged her to read the document entitled The Fool’s Errand That Is DOCX, dated December 27, 2022, and the letter urged her to direct her underlings to read that document.

I am honored to be part of a community of eighty-two patent practitioners who signed that letter to Director Vidal.

This blog article reports that the letter did get sent to the USPTO.  You can see the letter, which is dated December 28, 2022, here.  The USPTO did receive the letter.

The next day, the USPTO blinked and postponed for another three months one of the really bad parts of its DOCX initiative.  See Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees During Fiscal Year 2020, 87 Federal Register 80073, published December 29, 2022.

There is reason to think that the USPTO is moving, albeit slowly, toward yet another bit of progress away from really bad parts of its DOCX initiative, in addition to that blink on December 29, 2022.  I hope to write another blog article soon about what might be another bit of progress.

Please take a look at the names of the eighty-two signers.  Maybe you know some of them.  If so, this might be a good time to say “thank you” to them.

Patent applicants and practitioners continue to resent the USPTO’s $400 penalty that it plans to impose upon any patent applicant that has the temerity to try to establish a PDF file as the “controlling” document for the patent application being filed.  The penalty was going to start a few days ago, on January 1, 2023.  The USPTO blinked and has postponed the penalty to a starting date of April 3, 2023.  As of right now, that is when this penalty will begin.

The other day I realized that there is a pretty strong analogy to make here between this $400 penalty and another bane of daily life — car rental companies gouging renters with the “collision damage waiver”.  Continue reading “USPTO’s $400 non-DOCX penalty and car rental collision damage waivers”

(Update:  The letter did get sent, and the USPTO received the letter (blog article).)

This blog article provides a document The Fool’s Errand That Is DOCX, dated December 27, 2022.  This blog article invites you to sign a letter urging USPTO people to read the document.  Continue reading “The Fool’s Errand That Is DOCX”