Category: Patents

Posted on

It turns out there’s a name for this: lorem ipsum

When you file a PCT application in a Receiving Office other than the RO/IB, the Receiving Office will consider whether it is “competent” to handle that particular PCT application.  If the RO determines that it is non-competent, it will transfer the application to the RO/IB for further processing.  (The application does not lose its filing date;  the RO/IB will honor the filing date that had been given to the application by the first RO.)

Each RO determines its own conditions for “competency”.  In the case of RO/US, the two ways that the RO might decide that it lacks competency as to a particular PCT application are:

    • no applicant identified in the Request is either a resident or citizen of the US, or
    • the application is not in the English language.

Either of these situations will prompt RO/US to transfer a particular PCT application to the RO/IB.

But what, the long-suffering blog reader may ask at this point, does all of this have to do with “lorem ipsum“?  Yes, those are today’s fun questions — the interesting question “what is lorem ipsum?” and the even more interesting question “what does lorem ipsum have to do with Receiving Office procedure under the Patent Cooperation Treaty?” Continue reading “It turns out there’s a name for this: lorem ipsum”

Posted on

How the “new, safer and simpler log-in” works at the USPTO?

click to enlarge

I’ve received many questions from people who have tried to use the “new, safer and simpler log-in” for PAIR and EFS-Web.  (See the big blue footer that now appears whenever you try to use PAIR.)  Here’s what one very experienced USPTO customer asked me:

Last week I set up two-factor authentication with MyUSPTO, following the USPTO’s instructions.  Recently the big blue banner started appearing and I figured I had better start using the newer, safer and simpler log-in.  So today I needed to e-file form SB39 in one of my cases.  This is my time to try out the newer, safer and simpler log-in, right?  I logged in at the USPTO web site using my MyUSPTO user ID and password.  So far, so good.  Over on the right side, it says “File patents with EFS Web”.  So now that I have logged in, I click there and I reach the “unregistered e-filers” page.  There are some links but none of them will get me to the “registered” EFS-Web.  Finally I give up on MyUSPTO and I click on the old-fashioned link on the upper left and I click on “eFile (registered)” and that got me to the familiar old Entrust Java Applet page.  I e-filed my form SB39.

When that was done I went back to the MyUSPTO home page again hoping to figure out how I might have gotten to the “registered” EFS-Web page.  What did I miss?

I’ll explain. Continue reading “How the “new, safer and simpler log-in” works at the USPTO?”

Posted on

Things you need to do today if you are a USPTO patent practitioner

You’ve received the scary emails from USPTO, and the scary pop-up messages in PAIR, saying that “you will need to use a newer, safer, and simpler log-in … beginning in October 2018”.

There are some things that you really need to do now (if you have not already done so) if you are a USPTO patent practitioner.  Each human being in your office needs to get a MyUSPTO user ID and password (if he or she has not already done so).  Each human being in your office needs to set up TOTP with that user ID (if he or she has not already done so).  And you need to attend some upcoming webinars in which USPTO will try to explain all of this very clearly.

I’ll explain. Continue reading “Things you need to do today if you are a USPTO patent practitioner”

Posted on

One month remaining to sign up for PCT seminar in Silicon Valley

One month remains, folks, to sign up for my PCT seminar that will take place in Silicon Valley, California, on October 16-18, 2018.

This will be a unique learning opportunity for practitioners and paralegals alike who wish to learn about the Patent Cooperation Treaty, or who wish to refresh their knowledge of the PCT, or who wish to learn how to use ePCT, or who wish to bring themselves up to date about PCT developments. Continue reading “One month remaining to sign up for PCT seminar in Silicon Valley”

Posted on

Are you a practitioner in Silicon Valley? Did you not receive this post card?

click to enlarge

Recently I mailed post cards to nearly all of the people in Silicon Valley who are admitted to practice before the USPTO.  This was about 4000 post cards.

By  now, about 400 of these post cards have been returned to sender as undeliverable.   Ten percent!

For each of these mailing addresses, it means the practitioner’s address with the Office of Enrollment and Discipline is undeliverable.  As I flip quickly through this stack of several hundred returned cards, I see names of very well known law firms and very well known high-tech companies.

So the point of this post is that if you did not receive one of these post cards, you might want to look in the the OED database to see if your mailing address with the OED is out of date.

If you are located outside of Silicon Valley and you know someone who is a registered practitioner in Silicon Valley, you might want to ask them if they did not receive the post card, in which case they might want to look in the OED database to see if they need to update their address.

Posted on

Winding down PDX – an action step for the USPTO

This past Saturday was a big day for DAS for US design filers and for US utility patent filers, in cases that claim priority from Chinese design and utility applications.  The big development was USPTO “pulling the plug” on PDX with respect to the Chinese patent office (blog article on utility patents and blog article on design patents).

The previous “pulling the plug” for PDX was last November 2017 when USPTO pulled the plug on PDX for Japan (blog article).

Now there is more plug-pulling to do.  Eventually PDX will be a thing of the past. Continue reading “Winding down PDX – an action step for the USPTO”