Category: Patents

The Netherlands Patent Office has just joined the long list of patent offices around the world that have pulled the plug on their fax machines.  See this notice dated February 6, 2020 in the PCT Applicant’s Guide.

Other recent blog articles about this kind of thing:

• Swiss patent office pulls the plug
• New Zealand patent office pulls the plug
• Slovakia patent office pulls the plug

(Update:  The letter got sent on February 22, 2020.  See blog post.)

You can see here a letter that will get sent to the Commissioner for Patents, Drew Hirshfeld, on about February 22.  Please consider adding your name to the signature list of the letter.  

In the letter, the signers ask four things.

• The signers ask that the USPTO discontinue its present practice of intentionally and actively aging PDX and DAS retrieval requests. They ask instead that going forward, the USPTO retrieve priority documents from PDX and DAS at the time that the applicant requests such retrieval.  See for example this blog article and this blog article.
• The signers also ask that USPTO discontinue the PDX system, so that going forward, priority document retrieval from the EPO can take place through the DAS system.  See for example this blog article.
• The signers suggest that Form PTO/SB/38 be reformatted so that the boxes for the important information (application number, DAS access code, filing date, Office of first filing) be large enough to permit text to be entered in a font that is easily read by the human eye even after the form has been degraded in the e-filing process.  See this blog article.
• Finally, the signers ask that USPTO become a Depositing Office with respect to international patent applications (PCT applications) that have been filed at the RO/US (the receiving office of the USPTO).  See this blog article.

To see the letter, and to see how to sign it, click here.

(Update:  A letter got sent on February 22, 2020 to the Commissioner for Patents at the USPTO, asking the USPTO to stop its foot-dragging on retrieval of electronic certified copies from DAS and PDX.  See blog post.)

Here is the setup for today’s hypothetical question.  Your docket desk has contacted you to let you know that:

• the crucial 4-and-16 date is imminent for one of your recently filed US utility patent applications in which you have made a Paris Convention priority claim, and
• the PDX/DAS people at the USPTO have not yet retrieved an electronic certified copy of your priority application from the foreign patent office.  

You must now figure out whether to file an Interim Copy of the priority application at the USPTO.

This blog article offers a summary of Best Practices comments about this from some very experienced patent practitioners. Continue reading “Figuring out whether to file an Interim Copy of a priority application”

If you are a US patent practitioner, of course you should be subscribed to the EFS-Web listserv.  Here is a recent post to that listserv that prompted today’s blog article:

I swear I read something about a new PTO program for automatically listing all submitted and cited prior art on continuations and divisionals–to stop people from re-filing everything again. But, I cannot find anything today.

Was I dreaming? If not, is this working?

And yes there is a new PTO program for this, as I will explain. Continue reading “The Patent Office absolutely trying to Do the Right Thing – IDSs in child cases”

(Update on March 1, 2020:  A month has passed and I have still heard nothing back from Mr. Holcombe’s office in response to my telephone and email inquiries.)

Today I learned that yesterday the USPTO’s Chief Information Office, Mr. Henry Holcombe, hosted a forum on the topic of Private PAIR.  I don’t know how Mr. Holcombe chose his guest list.  But what astonishes me is that no invitation was extended to the PAIR listserv.

The PAIR listserv is a community of over four hundred patent practitioners who make daily use of the PAIR system. My guess is that many or most of the “coalition members” who got invited to this forum are companies that make money by scraping data from USPTO systems, not by paying money to the USPTO.  In contrast, the members of the PAIR listserv are paying customers of the USPTO, who collectively pay tens of millions of dollars to the USPTO annually.

Mr. Holcombe’s stated goal of addressing recent concerns, gathering input, and sharing some details about his path forward would have been well served by reaching out to the PAIR listserv.

I contacted Mr. Holcombe’s office about this but have not gotten any response.