Patents – Page 59 – Ant-Like Persistence

September 2, 2019

A scary problem in EFS-Web

(Update: Maybe prompted by this blog article, it seems that somehow the USPTO found the third page of IDS and got it into IFW. Everything is okay now with this three-page IDS.)

How’s this for a nightmare situation in a pending US patent application? You e-file three pages of Information Disclosure Statements. But only two of the pages find their way into IFW.

TYFNIL we all realize what an adversary could do with this!

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The applicant filed three pages of information disclosure statements. You can see that from the Acknowledgment Receipt that is right here in the application file. But only two of the pages got considered by the Examiner. There were twenty US patents listed on that missing page.

Just imagine, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what a difference it would have made for the Examiner, if the Examiner had had an opportunity to consider those twenty US patents when deciding whether or not to grant this patent!

Here’s a real-life example. Ten minutes ago I e-filed three pages of Information Disclosure Statements. You can see it right here in this quotation from the ack receipt.

Then I did what we all do. I looked in IFW to see what I just e-filed. And this is what I see. Yes, only two of the pages of the IDS are visible in IFW.

And it’s the same in the “display references” tab in PAIR.

This is a trap for the unwary. The USPTO e-filing system lost one of the pages of my IDS. Fortunately I noticed that USPTO screwed this up. We will docket to watch closely to see if anyone at USPTO fixes the screwup.

The FOAP (first office action prediction) in this case is 15 months. So hopefully we have a little time to spare for pestering the USPTO to fix this problem.

The USPTO needs to fix EFS-Web so that pages don’t get lost like this.

The moral of the story? Always check IFW very carefully to see whether USPTO lost any pages of whatever you e-filed. And don’t just look for the items listed in IFW. Look at them. You would want to know if, for example, USPTO corrupted the images on those pages or turned them into blank pages.

Have you run into problems like this? Post a comment below.

September 1, 2019

An example of alpha-testing Patentcenter

(Update: It took eight days, but yes the EBC did eventually get this application fixed in IFW. Now we are able to see correctly in IFW what we actually filed in Patentcenter in this patent application. What a relief!)

In a previous blog article I applauded USPTO for doing real alpha-testing of its Patentcenter system with real revenue customers. And invited readers to recognize the contributions of the alpha testers themselves, who for more than a year now have been doing real patent filings in this system which will some day replace both EFS-Web and Private PAIR. Here is an example of what it is like to be an alpha tester. Continue reading “An example of alpha-testing Patentcenter”

September 1, 2019

You can thank your alpha-testers (and you can thank the USPTO)

The USPTO has, over the decades, had a bit of a spotty success rate at designing e-commerce systems. This blog article highlights two reasons to allow yourself some guarded optimism in this area — the fact that USPTO is doing real alpha-testing of its Patentcenter system, and that a small but very active core of USPTO customers are carrying out very aggressive alpha-testing of that system. Continue reading “You can thank your alpha-testers (and you can thank the USPTO)”

August 29, 2019

PPH does not mean much in 371 cases

(Update: Forty-two Patent Practitioners have written to Director Vidal about this. See blog article.)

If your path for getting a US patent from a PCT application is entry into the US national phase, keep in mind that the Patent Prosecution Highway is a joke these days. Continue reading “PPH does not mean much in 371 cases”

August 28, 2019

If there was any doubt that USPTO does not really support non-Microsoft DOCX files

(Corrected September 1, 2019 to reflect that the telltale Microsoft Word file-type icons appear in the Patentcenter e-filing system, not in EFS-Web.)

USPTO presents patent practitioners with a choice of two filing paths — Microsoft Word and PDF. If you e-file a Microsoft Word file, then that’s what USPTO wants. If you want to use a word processor other than Microsoft Word, then you face two possible paths. One path is that you save your patent application as a PDF. USPTO has proposed that you would have to pay a $400 penalty for e-filing the PDF. The other possibility is to export your patent application in a DOCX format from your non-Microsoft-Word word processor. You would then upload the DOCX file to EFS-Web or to Patentcenter (in alpha-test), and EFS-Web or Patentcenter would render the file into a PDF. You would then be expected to proofread the PDF carefully to detect the corruptions (and there would often be corruptions, documented here) introduced by USPTO’s failure to correctly handle DOCX files generated by word processors other than Microsoft Word. Here is the adhesion contract that EFS-Web or Patentcenter asks you to agree to:

The PDF(s) have been generated from the docx file(s). Please review the PDF(s) for accuracy. By clicking the continue button, you agree to accept any changes made by the conversion and that it will become the final submission.

Again, if you wished to avoid this malpractice risk, you need merely take either of two precautions:

purchase and use Microsoft Word, or
pay the $400 penalty and submit a PDF format patent application.

The situation is that the rendering engine that USPTO uses to render a DOCX file into a PDF is the Microsoft Word rendering engine. So by definition, the PDF that is generated from the DOCX file will be error-free if you used Microsoft Word to generate your DOCX file. But if you used a word processor file other than Microsoft Word to generate your DOCX file, the rendering engine offers no assurance of rendering the document accurately.

USPTO disingenuously suggests that there is some uniform “DOCX standard” and that somehow all word processor files that have file names ending in “DOCX” will look the same when e-filed in EFS-Web or in Patentcenter, regardless of the particular word processor that was used to create the word processor file. This is factually false.

click to enlarge

USPTO’s disingenuousness is highlighted by the icon that USPTO uses in Patentcenter to identify the type of file that the practitioner has uploaded. You can see it three times in this screen shot.

Yes, USPTO uses the Microsoft Word branded icon to identify the file type for the word processor file that the user has uploaded (that happens to have a “docx” file name extension). For this particular screenshot, the DOCX files that you see are files that I created using Libre Office. But did USPTO use a Libre Office branded icon for those files? No! USPTO used the Microsoft Word branded icon for those files. You can see it right there in the screen shot, three times.

If USPTO were really dedicated to trying to accommodate users of word processors other than Microsoft Word, we would not be seeing the Microsoft Word icon three times in this screen shot.

There do exist plenty of truly generic icons for DOCX file types, but USPTO did not choose to use any of those truly generic icons. Here are some of them:

Image result for icon for docx file

Let’s see whether someone at USPTO who is responsible for Patentcenter reads this blog and decides to take corrective action. Let’s see how long it takes for USPTO to change Patentcenter so that it uses an icon that is not Microsoft branded to identify the DOCX files that users upload to Patentcenter.

What would really be excellent is if USPTO were to stop using the Microsoft Word rendering engine in EFS-Web and Patentcenter to render DOCX files into PDF files. I think the responsible thing would be for USPTO to use (for example) the Libre Office rendering engine to render DOCX files into PDF files. I say this because I believe the Libre Office rendering engine actually comes much closer to complying with the relevant industry standards (ECMA-376 and ISO/IEC 29500) than does the Microsoft Word rendering engine.

August 26, 2019

Making smart use of ISA/KR and IPEA/KR

The Korean Intellectual Property Office has quietly rolled out several very nice features in its ISA and IPEA service. PCT filers who pick ISA/KR or IPEA/KR will want to familiarize themselves with these very nice features. Continue reading “Making smart use of ISA/KR and IPEA/KR”

August 25, 2019

Comments on the USPTO’s proposed penalty for non-DOCX filings

You can see comments which people have submitted to USPTO’s proposed penalty for non-DOCX filings.

Unfortunately the way the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is written, it mixes together many different issues. So it’s not easy to pick out the comments that particularly address the proposed penalty for non-DOCX filings.

Here are some comments that address this issue:

August 25, 2019

What’s this a photograph of?

Okay, loyal readers, who among us knows the name of this fitting? I first encountered these fittings a very long time ago, when I was about ten or eleven years old. If you know what this kind of fitting is called, please post a comment below.

August 25, 2019

A patent attorney that understands drape runners

On May 23, 1990, patent attorneys entered the mainstream. This happened in Season 1, Episode 7 of Twin Peaks. In this television series, the character Nadine Hurley has invented a completely silent drape runner. Unfortunately her patent application was rejected. Her husband Ed, played by Everett McGill, tries to comfort her, as seen in this six-second video clip.