Category: Patents

(Revised at about 2AM on May 15 to reflect that well after midnight, USPTO finally got EFS-Web working again.)

As most readers know, the USPTO’s EFS-Web system is broken today.  And I mean completely broken.  You can’t get to “EFS-Web for registered users” at all — it merely takes you to a page that mentions EFS-Web Contingency.  You also can’t get to “EFS-Web for unregistered users” — that too merely takes you to the page that mentions EFS-Web Contingency.  And EFS-Web Contingency is broken too.  (It goes slow as molasses and never actually lets you “submit”.)

For filers, the main thing to keep in mind is that if you are filing a new patent application or you are entering the US national stage, you can’t fax it in.  You will have to take it to the Post Office and send it by Priority Mail Express (née Express Mail).  We sent our youngest associate to the late-night Post Office in Denver a few minutes ago and he successfully mailed the one patent application that had to go out today from our office.

For lesser tasks such as responding to an Office Action you can try to fax it.  As a reminder the fax number is 571-273-8300.  It looks like USPTO’s fax server is unable to keep up with the traffic, however.  One of our faxes has failed three times and we have not managed yet to get it to go through.  We finally had to resort to a Certificate of First-Class Mail for an envelope that we dropped into a mail box shortly before midnight.

Having delivered the main emergency message, I will now talk about what USPTO did wrong that led to today’s disaster.

Continue reading “EFS-Web is broken today”

When you log in to USPTO’s Private PAIR and EFS-Web system, you have to go through a cumbersome process.  You have to mouse around and find a “crypto certificate” on your hard drive that proves your identity.  You have to wait for a very slow “Java applet” to run, taking some tens of seconds.  And you have to type in a password that is required to contain at least one smiley face (just kidding).  This would not be so bad except that this system logs you out at more or less random times, after anywhere from ten to sixty minutes of inactivity.  A quick trip to the bathroom or coffee machine can lead to your having to log in all over again.  In a normal work day a USPTO customer might be forced to log in again a dozen or more times.

A couple of years ago I surveyed users of PAIR and EFS-Web about this system of forced logouts.  The vast majority of respondents said that for them, this system of forced logouts is a bug, not a feature.  I passed the results of the survey along to USPTO people who are responsible for this system.  Unfortunately in the two years that have passed since this survey, USPTO has not done anything to improve this situation.

Continue reading “USPTO should stop the forced logouts from Private PAIR and EFS-Web”

The comment period closed April 24 and of course nearly all commenters filed their comments on the last possible day.  USPTO has posted the comments.

Continue reading “Comments on USPTO’s proposed rules on attributable ownership”

USPTO’s present practice is to try to make patent examiners examine cases pretty much in sequence according to their filing date.  The oldest case gets examined first, more or less.  (There are of course exceptions for example for cases that are on the Patent Prosecution Highway.)  I suggest this is not the smartest way for USPTO to allocate its examination resources.

Continue reading “Why not allocate USPTO examiner resources intelligently?”