Patentcenter converts perfectly good PDF into blank piece of paper

(This is trouble ticket CP27.)

When we e-file a document in EFS-Web or in Patentcenter, our habit is go to later into Private PAIR or Patentcenter to look in IFW to see what is actually there.  The goal is to compare what is actually there with what we think we e-filed.  In an ideal world “going later to look in IFW” would not even be needed because the USPTO systems would always faithfully store exactly what we uploaded.  But regrettably often, what is in IFW diverges from what we uploaded.  The divergences if you use EFS-Web are familiar and frequent users of EFS-Web usually know what to expect, for example any image containing color or gray scale will get ruined by USPTO’s ill-conceived halftoning.

But if the user is using Patentcenter for the e-filing, there are scary ways that IFW can diverge from what the filer uploaded.  One way is that entire documents are often missing.  In one of our new applications that we e-filed yesterday in Patentcenter, what should have appeared in IFW were eighteen documents.  Instead, shortly after filing, only four documents appeared in IFW.  Even now, some twelve hours later, fourteen documents are missing from IFW.  

And of course Patentcenter does not have “last 40 ack receipts” like EFS-Web, so there is no way for the filer who used Patentcenter to prove that the filer really e-filed fourteen documents, unless the filer was so paranoid as to download and preserve the Patentcenter ack receipts at the time of filing.  In this particular case I am not very worried because among the missing fourteen documents was a fee payment, and the fees do show up in the “fees” tab as having been paid.  

But what is very scary is Patentcenter converting a perfectly good PDF file into a blank sheet of paper.

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In this case what I uploaded was a PDF file that was one page in length.  The PDF had dimensions of 8.26 by 10.59 inches as may be seen at right.  (The way this PDF came into existence is that a human being scanned a physical paper document on a Brother MFC printer-scanner into an emailed PDF file.)  When I uploaded it into Patentcenter, the validation message was “the page size is too large … the page should be 8½ by 11 or A4 … the page will be resized”.  I did not mind at all if Patentcenter were to resize the page.  This would simply mean enlarging it by about three percent, or maybe tacking on a few pixels around the edges to pad it out to 8½ by 11.  No problem.  So I clicked “submit” in Patentcenter.  

Here is the scary part.  What you now see in IFW is a blank page.  Perfectly blank.  

I did some image analysis on the blank-page PDF that Patentcenter stuffed into IFW instead of my normal-looking scanned PDF that had lots of ink on the page.  The blank-page PDF is one bit per pixel, which is perfectly normal for IFW.  And the PDF metadata say that its dimensions are 8½ by 11 which is normal for IFW.  But the pixel count is 2482 by 3179, which is not at all normal.  At 300 dots per inch, an 8½ by 11 inch page should be 2550 by 3300 pixels.  

Yes, the alert reader will realize that the pixel count of 2482 by 3179 is a telltale.  At 300 dots per inch, this pixel count translates to … wait for it … 8.27 by 10.59 inches.  Yes, Patentcenter “resized” the PDF but only by tampering with meta-data, not by actually resizing the document.

In my case, yes I saw that this mistake in the design of Patentcenter had led to a perfectly good PDF getting converted to a blank page.  So I went back to the original PDF and printed it to CutePDF, using the “fit to page” option to resize it to 8½ by 11.  I then e-filed the resulting PDF file in Patentcenter and it now appears in IFW and it looks perfectly normal, with ink on the page.

But the filer who simply trusts that Patentcenter will faithfully load each PDF file accurately into IFW could get burned by this sort of flaw in Patentcenter.  There is unfortunately no substitute for going and looking in IFW each time you e-file something in Patentcenter, just to see whether something got changed to a blank page.  Or to see whether fourteen out of eighteen pages got lost.

All USPTO systems are broken

(Updated to include link to USPTO’s 411 page.)

It seems that all USPTO systems are broken.

Members of the EFS-Web listserv, the Patentcenter listserv, and the e-Trademarks listserv (each of which you should join if you have not done so already) are reporting that all USPTO systems are broken just now.  

Here is the link to USPTO’s 411 page:  https://www.uspto.gov/blog/system411/ .  Right now it says:

USPTO is experiencing an enterprise wide issue. Users are reporting being unable to connect to the USPTO network and receiving the error “revocation status of the smartcard could not be determined”. Support groups are troubleshooting this situation, but other impacts include share drive mapping issues, SharePoint access issues, and other applications may have impacts as a result of this situation. Users are advised not to contact the Service Desk at this time. Due to the High Call Volume that the OCIO Service Desk is experiencing, there are reports of some users receiving busy signals when calling.

 

Still concerned about DOCX?

(Update:  it is time for you, dear reader to consider signing another letter.  See blog posting.)

A colleague today noted that by now more than a month has passed since the last time I griped about USPTO’s DOCX activities in this blog.  He wondered if perhaps my silence was an indication that I feel the USPTO people have somehow addressed my concerns about the DOCX situation.

Just so that there is no risk of any misunderstanding about this, no, it is not the case that anything that anyone at the USPTO has done has alleviated in any way my concerns about USPTO’s DOCX plans. Continue reading “Still concerned about DOCX?”

Monday, May 25 is a holiday at the USPTO

Monday, Monday, 25, 2020 will be a federal holiday in the District of Columbia.  This means the USPTO will be closed.  This means that any action that would be due at the USPTO on May 25 will be timely if it is done by Tuesday, May 26, 2020.

USPTO clears two Patentcenter trouble tickets

Quite by accident today I stumbled upon the good news that USPTO fixed two bugs in Patentcenter, permitting us to clear two Patentcenter trouble tickets today.  The cleared trouble tickets are:

  • CP1 — Web-based Form 85B loses initial capitalization for assignee city name (see article)
  • CP8 – Reel number displayed wrong (see article

The trouble ticket page has been updated accordingly.  This leaves twenty-one outstanding trouble tickets.

Of course what we can hope for is that eventually the Patentcenter developers will establish an outbound communications channel with the beta testing community, and will let us know when they fix a bug or add a requested feature.  Until then, it will be a matter of our stumbling upon the fact of a bug having been fixed or a desirable feature having been added.

 

Spurious “user is not enrolled” error in Patentcenter

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Patentcenter incorrectly lists every user as “not enrolled”.  Patentcenter incorrectly says that every user “cannot access customer number in Patent Center and PAIR.”

To see this, log in at Patentcenter, click on “Manage”, click on “Manage customer numbers”.  Then click on any customer number in your list.  You will see that every user is flagged as being “not enrolled”.

This is bug report CP33.

EPO is still missing from Patentcenter Web-based ADS

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Six months have now passed since I first reported this problem to the EBC.  Still it has not been fixed.  EPO is missing from the Web-based ADS function in Patentcenter!

EPO is in the web-based ADS function in EFS-Web.   But it is missing in the corresponding function in Patentcenter.  This is bug report CP9 and you can read about it here.

This would be so very easy to fix.  It would be a matter of adding one line of text in a list item on a web page.