Category: Patents

I am delighted to have learned that the Israel Patent office has joined the DAS system.  Continue reading “Israel Patent Office joins the DAS system”

It’s time for the second annual US Plant Patent Toteboard.

A year ago I published the 2017 US Utility Patent Toteboard and before that, the 2016 US Utility Patent Toteboard, and a year before that the 2015 US Utility Patent Toteboard.  Now it’s time to finalize and publish the 2018 US Utility Patent toteboard.

The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients to obtain US utility patents in 2018.  It will rank the firms according to the number of US utility patents obtained.  Respondents are asked to report only US utility patents for which the firm is listed on the front page of the granted patent.  Please respond by Thursday, March 21, 2019.

You can see the previous Toteboards here.

To respond to be listed in the US Utility Patent Tote Board, click here.

It is also time to report your numbers for the 2018 US design patent tote board and the 2018 US trademark registration tote board and the 2018 US plant patent tote board.

There are only a few good ways for a new US patent practitioner to get training.  One of these ways is the AIPLA Patent Prosecution Boot Camp, which will take place May 13-15, 2019 in Philadelphia.

Your truly will once again have the honor of serving with the other faculty members of this boot camp.  I know, having served on the faculty of this boot camp for many years now, that the other practitioners who give their time and energy to this program are among the most skilled, experienced, and generous as any in the patent profession.

To find out more, or to register, click here.

 

I’m going to reveal a practice tip that I had been keeping to myself for the past thirty years of patent practice.  The practice tip is to be alert to the possibility that some important thing about a client’s invention may turn on “surface phenomena”.  My main point being that as far as I can tell, nobody actually knows how most surface phenomena work, and so you can use the phrase in some client/inventor discussions, and the client/inventor will think you are very smart regardless of whether you are actually very smart. Continue reading “Surface Phenomena”

It is recalled that to log in at PAIR or EFS-Web using an EPF file (what USPTO calls PKI), you are required to have Java installed in your web browser.

For many years USPTO customers had been telling USPTO that it needed to scrap the dreaded “java applet” method of logging in which is the method that uses the EPF file.  USPTO failed to act upon these suggestions and complaints from customers.

What finally pushed USPTO to devise a new way for logging in (the “MyUSPTO” approach) was not customer complaints but something else, namely that Oracle, the provider of Java, finally got around to announcing that it would start charging money for Java.

And indeed until a few weeks ago, it was all set that by February 15, 2019, USPTO would pull the plug on the EPF way of logging in.

It might be thought that this was the end of java applets for USPTO tasks.  But no.  Java is needed not only for the logging-in task, but also for the downloading of cited US patents and US patent publications from PAIR.  What we are talking about is the ePatent reference program, which USPTO launched in 2004.  USPTO launched ePatent reference at the time that USPTO ceased providing paper copies of cited US patents and cited US patent publications with paper-mailed Office Actions.

So if you are going to download cited US patents and cited US patent pubs from PAIR, you still need Java.  And as of a month ago, you will need to pay a licensing fee to Oracle to be able to use Java.

I suspect that nobody at USPTO gave a moment’s thought to the fact that Java is needed for more than one task in PAIR.  Not only for EPF logins, but also for downloading cited US patents and pubs.

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Revised on March 18, 2019 to note that there is an advisory in PAIR that says:

Advisory (13FEB2019): Due to technical difficulties, users may not be able to complete downloads using ePatent Reference.  USPTO technical teams are working to correct the issue.

The PAIR Announcements page does not provide any further explanation of this advisory.  I cannot tell from what USPTO posted whether this February 13 Advisory is linked to the cutoff of the Java-based EPF login procedure that was previously scheduled to happen on February 15.