Category: Patents

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Ethics CLE – securing electronic communications

In nearly every state, ethics rules require a lawyer to make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.  Colorado Rule 1.6(c), for example, says:

A lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.

Does it violate ethics rules to use email in client communications?  Does it violate ethics rules to use ordinary text messaging on a mobile phone?  What about Skype, or Whatsapp, Viber or Signal?  Continue reading “Ethics CLE – securing electronic communications”

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Uruguay on a path to join the PCT

(Update:  Uruguay has deposited its instrument of accession!  See blog article.)

(Corrected my mistake about the consequences of Uruguay having joined only Chapter I.)

I am delighted to see that Uruguay is on the way to membership in the Patent Cooperation Treaty.  It has passed both chambers of the Uruguayan legislature, and is on its way to the executive branch for signature.  Continue reading “Uruguay on a path to join the PCT”

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Attend a 2½-day live in-person Patent Cooperation Treaty seminar in scenic Summit County, Colorado

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Attend a 2½-day live in-person Patent Cooperation Treaty seminar in scenic Summit County, Colorado, next to Lake Dillon and surrounded by snow-capped mountains.  Maybe also attend an optional half-day program specifically directed to docketing of the PCT.  Tuesday, June 25 to Thursday, June 27, 2024.

    • Get $90 off the 2½-day class if you book by Tuesday, June 11 – coupon code BL0603A
    • Get $36 off the half-day course if you book by Tuesday, June 11 – coupon code BL0603B
    • Get $126 off both courses if you book by Tuesday, June 11 – coupon code BL0603C

For more information, or to register, click here.

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Assignment Center was broken for customers using IPv6, now fixed

Here is a subtle mistake that the USPTO made recently.  The USPTO made it so that if a USPTO customer were to try to use Assignment Center using an IPv4 address, Assignment Center would work.  But if instead the USPTO customer were to try to use Assignment Center using an IPv6 address (Wikipedia article), Assignment Center would fail to load.  I reported this on May 7, 2024 in a posting to the Patent Practice listserv.  You can see the listserv posting here.

Now on May 13, I see that the USPTO corrected its mistake.  It is now possible to make use of Assignment Center even if you are using an IPv6 address.

I think what almost certainly happened is, one of the USPTO lurkers on the Patent Practice listserv saw the May 7 posting about the defect, and forwarded the posting to one of the Assignment Center developers, and eventually they corrected the defect.

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USPTO fails to let me know that it fixed a defect that I reported in Assignment Center

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Three times in February of 2024, by three different communications channels to the USPTO,  I reported a defect in Assignment Center.   The defect, shown at right, was that Assignment Center refused to permit me to record an assignment against a PCT application number.

Now, three months later, the USPTO did fix this defect.  But the USPTO failed to let me know they fixed it.  I had to stumble upon it by accident that the USPTO had fixed it.  Continue reading “USPTO fails to let me know that it fixed a defect that I reported in Assignment Center”

Posted on

Attend a 2½-day live in-person Patent Cooperation Treaty seminar in scenic Summit County, Colorado

click to enlarge

Attend a 2½-day live in-person Patent Cooperation Treaty seminar in scenic Summit County, Colorado, next to Lake Dillon and surrounded by snow-capped mountains.  Maybe also attend an optional half-day program specifically directed to docketing of the PCT.  Tuesday, June 25 to Thursday, June 27, 2024.

    • Get $100 off the 2½-day class if you book by May 18 – coupon code Z4GJFQJA
    • Get $40 off the half-day course if you book by May 18 – coupon code DXRLPGND
    • Get $140 off both courses if you book by May 18 – coupon code EPXOGTH0

For more information, or to register, click here.

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USPTO gives legal advice, and it’s flat wrong

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When I was first in practice, you could purchase up to three months of extensions of time to pay an Issue Fee.  That ended around a decade ago.  For the past decade, the situation has been that if you are as little as one day late in paying your Issue Fee, the application will go abandoned.  You would then be faced with the prospect of having to pay a USPTO fee of $2100 (or $840, or $420) along with a Petition to Revive, to overcome the abandonment.

With this in mind, here is a screen shot from Patent Center in an application that has received a Notice of Allowance.  For this allowed US patent application, the legal advice from the USPTO is:

Payment of fees during this stage of the application process is optional, but failure to pay fees in a timely manner may cause delays in the processing of your application.

This legal advice is, as any experienced practitioner knows, flatly false.  In no way is the payment of the Issue Fee “optional”.  And the consequence of failing to pay the Issue Fee “in a timely manner” does not merely “cause delays in the processing” — it abandons the application.

For an experienced practitioner, this wrong legal advice probably routinely gets ignored.  But in recent years the USPTO has done lots of outreach urging inventors to file pro se.  It is surely only a matter of time before some pro se inventor believes this wrong advice and ends up with no patent at all.

Continue reading “USPTO gives legal advice, and it’s flat wrong”