Bluesky: @oppedahl.com
(updated to mention new trouble ticket CP153 and to describe the bug more directly.)
The USPTO has announced (press release) that on November 8, 2023, seven weeks from today, it will shut down EFS-Web. It looks like the USPTO has completely failed to give any thought to what this means for PCT applicants whose patent applications involve genetic and nucleotide sequences. Continue reading “Yet another thing the USPTO got wrong about its planned shutdown of EFS-Web”
I was gobsmacked during today’s USPTO webinar entitled How to make a smooth transition to Patentcenter. The USPTO doubled down on a serious PCT-related defect in Patentcenter, saying that it is actually supposedly a feature, not a bug.
Everybody knows that you are not supposed to enter the US national stage twice from any single PCT application. Or, to state it more plainly, it is legally impossible to enter the US national stage twice from any single PCT application.
Everybody knows this, that is, except the presenter in today’s USPTO webinar entitled How to make a smooth transition to Patentcenter. This is a webinar that is intended to help experienced users of EFS-Web and Private PAIR make the transition to Patentcenter.
EFS-Web guards against the inadvertent duplicate entry into the US national stage from a PCT application. Of course one of the stated design goals for Patentcenter, since its origin in 2018, is that all features from EFS-Web are supposed to be brought forward into Patentcenter. Indeed the USPTO has announced “mission accomplished” for this stated design goal. The USPTO says on its web site:
Patent Center has 100% of the functionality of EFS-Web, Public and Private PAIR …
This is patently false (blog article), but USPTO has not corrected this false statement. One of the ways that USPTO has failed to provide “100% of the functionality of EFS-Web” in Patentcenter is that Patentcenter fails to guard against duplicate attempts to enter the US national stage from a PCT application. This defect was reported to the USPTO on February 20, 2023 in trouble ticket CP99 (deep link to trouble ticket page).
During today’s USPTO webinar entitled How to make a smooth transition to Patentcenter, an attendee asked about this defect in Patentcenter. I was gobsmacked to hear the USPTO presenter actually doubling down on the defect, stating that it is supposedly a feature, not a bug. You can hear the words of the presenter here (MP3 file) and you can play the audio file here:
Here is a transcript:
Attendee question. In EFS-Web, the system guards against a possible duplicate attempt to enter the US national stage from a particular PCT application. Patentcenter fails to do so. Why is that?
USPTO answer. Stakeholder feedback indicated that Patentcenter may be implemented to allow more than one 371 filing, which may be desirable in situations where, for example, a unity-of-invention restriction was made during the international phase, to separate the claims into multiple groups. So that was a great question, and hopefully that answer will shed some light on that for you.
Hopefully what will happen soon is that the USPTO will send out a corrective email message to everybody who attended today’s USPTO webinar, letting them know that the presenter was completely wrong about this.
And hopefully, what will happen soon is that the USPTO will correct this defect in Patentcenter, which was reported to the USPTO on February 20, 2023.
You heard it here first (blog article, July 13, 2023)! Today is the day that the Italian Patent and Trademark Office becomes an Accessing Office in the DAS system for the following kinds of applications:
Continue reading “Today is the day — Italy becomes an Accessing Office in DAS”
On June 6, 2023, the USPTO published a Federal Register notice (88 FR 37039) requesting comments on USPTO’s estimates of the burden that the DOCX application filing initative will impose upon applicants. That FR Notice had set a closing date of August 7, 2023 for filing of comments.
As it turns out, nine comments got filed. You can see them here:
All of the comments are extremely negative towards USPTO’s DOCX initiative. Here is what listserv member Richard Schafer had to say about the AIPLA comments:
I haven’t had time to read the entire letter, but based on the executive summary section, I don’t remember seeing a public comment from the AIPLA or any other professional organization that was this strongly negative about a PTO proposal. I can only imagine the frustration certain portions of the PTO must be experiencing to have the largest professional organization in this field take such a strong stance against the entire DOCX proposal.
I’m sure someone in the PTO was lobbying AIPLA to try to prevent this kind of statement. Thankfully, that lobbying has clearly failed.
Here is my reaction to the AIPLA comments. Highlights of the AIPLA comment letter include:
The USPTO has announced that it plans to send a “welcome letter” to each applicant that files a new trademark application or patent application at the USPTO. You can see the actual wecome letters archived here (trademarks) and here (patents).
(Update: the seven other comments are now public, and you can see them here.)
Hello colleagues. The comment letter about USPTO’s DOCX initiative that I discussed in an earlier blog article got finalized and it received one hundred and seven signatures. It got filed in response to the Federal Register notice (which you can see here) within the due date of August 7, 2023. You can see the letter, as signed and filed, here.
Thank you very much to the One Hundred Seven signers!
I also sent in a separate comment letter so as to enter three documents into the record. You can see that separate comment letter, dated August 6, 2023, here.
Hello colleagues. Yesterday I posted a draft comment letter about USPTO’s DOCX initiative. Colleagues provided very helpful suggestions and corrections. With the benefit of the suggestions and corrections, the letter is now “locked”. It won’t change again. You can see it here.
Right now the letter has 42 signatures. The signers have, directly or through their firms or corporations, filed more than 26000 US patent applications in the past ten years. The signers have, directly or through their firms or corporations, paid more than $38 million in fees to the USPTO in the past ten years.
Please consider adding your signature to those who have already signed it.
For their entire careers, US patent and trademark practitioners have lived and breathed a world of “reel and frame numbers” that are somehow intimately connected with the recordation of patent and trademark assignments. What exactly are reel and frame numbers, and how is it that reel and frame numbers relate closely with bitcoin and blockchain and shared ledgers? Continue reading “What reel and frame numbers have to do with bitcoin and blockchain and shared ledgers”
On December 10, 2019 I provided training material to the USPTO (blog article, training material) about PCT Declaration Number 4. The idea is that a patent firm located outside the US might be trendy, modern, and up-to-date and might provide a signed inventor declaration (for later US purposes) at the time of filing a PCT application. The idea is that perhaps 1½ or 2½ years later, when the US national phase is entered, the signed declaration of inventorship for US purposes would already be in the file! The idea is that the formalities examiner in the DO/EO/US would take a look in the file and would pay attention to the presence of the signed PCT Declaration Number 4.
Unfortunately, all too often in recent months, we have had cases at the DO/EO/US where the formalities examiner at the USPTO fails to pay attention to the presence of the signed PCT Declaration Number 4 in our national-phase entry application file. Just today, for example, in one of our national-phase entry applications, the formalities examiner at the USPTO mailed out an official Filing Receipt along with Form PCT/DO/EO/903 (371 Acceptance Notice) dated July 17, 2023 falsely stating that we had failed to provide a “properly executed inventor’s oath or declaration” for our inventor.
It is hoped that the USPTO will once again in 2023 provide the training materials to its DO/EO/US formalities examiners, so that they can avoid making this mistake in the future for other US national-phase applicants.
PCT enthusiasts now have two subjects to choose from for binge-watching. Just today I finished the video editing of the sixteenth webinar in the recently finished sixteen-webinar series on ePCT. As a consequence, as of today, a PCT enthusiast may, if desired, binge-watch more than nineteen hours of webinar video about ePCT. (You can see it here.)
This parallels the over fourteen hours of webinar video about PCT (as distinguished from ePCT) that are available for binge-watching here. Yes, the PCT enthusiast has not one but two subjects available for binge-watching.