We’re just wrapping up the AIPLA PCT Road Show that started yesterday and finishes today — the road show in Westminster, Colorado. As so often happens, we (the faculty) have been blessed with an alert audience that has lots of good questions. Tomorrow is travel day …
Astonishingly good system integration at WIPO
Just now I e-filed a PCT patent application in the Receiving Office of the International Bureau. I did this using WIPO’s ePCT system. And a mere sixty seconds later, I was able to click and see a draft of the front page of what will eventually be the eighteen-month publication, all the way down to the date (February 5, 2015) that it will probably be published. I am astonished at the level of integration among WIPO’s various systems that must have been accomplished to make this possible. Indeed there are half a dozen good things about this e-filing experience that deserve comment.
Continue reading “Astonishingly good system integration at WIPO”
Sign up before July 16 for the 18th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar
It’s July again, which means it is time for another AIPLA PCT Seminar. This will be the 18th annual offering of the Seminar. The Seminar will take place in Denver, Colorado on Monday and Tuesday July 21 and 22, and it will be offered a second time in Arlington, Virginia on Thursday and Friday July 24 and 25. I will be among the faculty of this Seminar. If the Seminar will take place a week from now, why is it so important to sign up before July 16?
Continue reading “Sign up before July 16 for the 18th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar”
USPTO mishandling QPIDS
I expect that some readers of this blog have made use of QPIDS, the Quick Path Information Disclosure Statement system. The goal of QPIDS is to reduce the number of times that an applicant has to pay an RCE fee to get an IDS considered. Unfortunately in recent times USPTO has been mishandling the QPIDS system. The result is that often an applicant is stuck paying even more money than the applicant would have had to pay if the applicant had simply filed an RCE instead of a QPIDS.
More on USPTO’s total system crash on May 14
Most readers of this blog were affected one way or another by USPTO’s total crash of all patent-related e-commerce systems on Wednesday, May 14. I blogged about the crash here and here. I faxed a letter to Acting Director Lee on May 17 about the crash. In my letter, among other things I asked her to do whatever was necessary to waive the $400 penalty that would normally be imposed on a filer that failed to e-file on May 14 and instead was forced by USPTO’s crash to file by postal service or by hand carry to the USPTO.
More than a month came and went, with no word from Acting Director Lee in response to my faxed letter. This despite my having telephoned Acting Director Lee’s office once a week or so since May 17, asking if someone could at least confirm receipt of the fax and maybe tell me who had been given the task of responding to the fax.
A few days ago I decided to work out how exactly Acting Director Lee could accomplish the waiver of the penalty. Continue reading “More on USPTO’s total system crash on May 14”
USPTO misses a chance to do the right thing about its May 14 system crash
USPTO imposes a $400 penalty on those who paper-file a patent application instead of e-filing it. The policy reason is, of course, to make people e-file. But USPTO’s e-filing system had a total crash (blog post) on Wednesday, May 14, that made it impossible for USPTO customers to e-file their patent applications. This forced customers to paper-file (for example by going to the Post Office).
The right thing, of course, would be for USPTO to waive the $400 penalty for filings carried out on May 14. But no …
Continue reading “USPTO misses a chance to do the right thing about its May 14 system crash”
Odd new USPTO feature in EPAS and ETAS
The other day I encountered a new “feature” of EPAS and ETAS. 
You can see it in this screen shot:
Apparently the USPTO wants to make it possible for the filer to somehow influence the physical sequence in which recordations appear in the Abstract of Title.
As far as I can see this is not a good thing for USPTO to do.
A reminder that USPTO needs to scrap the Entrust java applet for PAIR and EFS-Web
Regular users of USPTO’s Private PAIR and EFS-Web systems are reminded several times a day that the only way that they make use of the systems is by permitting a computer program called the Entrust java applet to run o
n their computer.
But the Java system will block the Entrust applet in a future Java security update. (See warning at right.)
Here is what USPTO should do …
Continue reading “A reminder that USPTO needs to scrap the Entrust java applet for PAIR and EFS-Web”
USPTO still not out from under mountain of paper
Well, the USPTO is still not out from under its mountain of paper due to its massive system crash on May 14.
Readers will recall the massive system crash on Wednesday, May 14. What will stick in your mind is that May 14 is the day that you had to use USPS’s Click-n-Ship system to print a Priority Mail Express label so that you could file a US patent application by taking it to your local post office to be received in person by a postal service employee. You and several thousand other patent practitioners who would have normally used EFS-Web to do your filing, leading to a mountain of paper at the USPTO.
From our perspective, here is the USPTO’s progress at getting out from under the mountain of paper.
Continue reading “USPTO still not out from under mountain of paper”
USPTO begins to crawl out from under its mountain of paper
Last Wednesday, May 14, was a day when USPTO’s main patent-related e-commerce systems all crashed. As I mentioned in my blog posting about the crash, the practical consequence for thousands of patent practitioners was the need to carry out paper and postal service filings, following Rule 8 and Rule 10 as we all used to do back before there was an Internet. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. USPTO is under a mountain of paper.
Continue reading “USPTO begins to crawl out from under its mountain of paper”