Category: Patentcenter

(Updated May 12, 2020.  USPTO has fixed this bug, thus clearing trouble ticket CP8.)

Until this week the Patentcenter system was in a controlled beta test, accessible to only a very limited number of beta testers.  This week USPTO made the choice to open the beta testing to everybody.  This week I also launched the Patentcenter listserv, an email discussion group for users of Patentcenter.  (To find out more or to subscribe, click here.)   Listserv members have already solved a coding error that USPTO made in Patentcenter in the display of reel and frame numbers.

The way this started was that alert listserv member Shannon Vieau noticed that if you look at a reel and frame number for a patent application in PAIR, and if you look at the same patent application in Patentcenter, the reel and frame numbers don’t match.  Prompted by Shannon’s posting, I looked up a few of my own applications, and they all likewise failed to match.  I picked one that was a published case.  For that case, the frame number is the same in the two places — 366.  But in PAIR the reel number is 048299 while in Patentcenter the reel number is 17237.  I posted the actual reel and frame numbers in this blog article.  

At this point alert listserv member Richard Schafer wrote:

Guess what you get if you add 17237 to 48299: 65536. That just can’t be a coincidence. I haven’t checked any of my cases, but I’ll bet they’re all like that, suggesting some weird piece of bad handling of a 16-bit integer value. How that could pass any level of testing of the code, I can’t imagine.

65536 is one of those really interesting numbers for a person who does a lot of computer programming.  It is 2¹⁶.    

Richard then looked up some of his own cases in PAIR and in Patentcenter, and here was his report:

I just confirmed my suspicion with two of my applications. The Patent Center reel number and the PAIR reel number always add up to 65536. That’s just hilariously broken.

At this point alert listserv member and experienced computer programmer Neil Ormos identified how USPTO can fix this coding mistake:

What a great catch! Someone at the PTO owes you a bug bounty!

That kind of error is fairly common. Someone writes the field as an unsigned int and then reads it back as a signed int, or uses sprintf(“%d”) when they should have used sprintf(“%u”). Happens all the time.

“Beta” testing is great, no? You just harness the customer as free labor, and they stand in line to volunteer!

So anyway the coding fix has now been posted here.  It will be interesting to see how many days it takes USPTO to correct the coding error in Patentcenter.  (This is trouble ticket number CP8, cleared May 12, 2020.)

Recently the USPTO opened up access to Patentcenter to all users.  (Previously it was open only to certain alpha and beta testers.)  This prompted me to set up a new listserv for Patentcenter users (to learn more or to subscribe, click here).  Alert listserv member Shannon Vieau raised a fascinating issue namely that the reel and frame numbers listed for recorded assignments in Patentcenter often do not match those listed for recorded assignments in PAIR.  Prompted by her listserv posting (thank you!) I looked up one of our cases where in PAIR it says what you see above.

Meanwhile in Patentcenter it says what you see at right.  Yeah.  The frame number is the same in the two places — 366.  But in PAIR the reel number is 048299 while in Patentcenter the reel number is 17237.  One of them is clearly wrong.

Which one is correct?  The answer is, Patentcenter is wrong.  PAIR is correct.  Shannon reported this to the EBC today.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this to get fixed.

(Update:  I am astonished and disappointed to see that the USPTO developers made this exact same mistake four years later, in Trademark Center.  See blog article.)

(Update:  it took more than six months from when we reported the bug, but USPTO did finally fix it.  See blog article.)

When you are e-filing a new utility patent application in EFS-Web, one of the ways to make the priority claim is by means of a web-based Application Data Sheet.  There’s a place in EFS-Web where you can say that you are adding a priority claim, and it gives you a drop-down menu of patent offices where your priority application might have been filed.

USPTO has had users alpha-testing and beta-testing its new system called Patentcenter, which will eventually replace EFS-Web.  Patentcenter has a similar web-based ADS function that allows you to make a priority claim when you are filing a new patent application.  When you use this function, eventually you reach this drop-down menu of patent offices where your priority application might have been filed.  Can you guess which well-known foreign patent office is missing from this drop-down list in Patentcenter? Continue reading “Can’t claim priority in Patentcenter?”

New users of Patentcenter will learn soon enough that there is a way that Patentcenter breaks USPTO’s own rules.

If there’s anything that patent practitioners learn the hard way, it is that the USPTO systems ruin any PDF that contains color or gray scale when the PDF gets loaded into IFW.  I documented this back in 2006 as you can see here.  USPTO recognized this (EFS-Web guidelines) at least as long ago as 2008:

Text of other colors [other than black] may not convert to image properly, resulting in unreadable or invisible text.

So imagine how disappointing it is to see that the designers of Patentcenter have set it up so that every single form generated by Patentcenter for loading into IFW is filled with color and gray scale!  Which violates USPTO’s own rules for images to be e-filed in IFW. Continue reading “Patentcenter creates and loads color and gray scale into IFW”

Are you using Patentcenter?  Are you planning to use Patentcenter now that it is open for all filers (blog article)?  If you have not already done so, you should join the Patentcenter listserv.  This is an email discussion group for users of USPTO’s Patentcenter system.  To join the listserv, click here.  Continue reading “Join the new Patentcenter listserv”

Until now, only certain filers were able to gain access to USPTO’s Patentcenter system.  To gain access, the filer had to be visiting from an IP address on a particular approved list.

Starting yesterday, April 20, 2020, the USPTO removed the IP address restrictions.  Now anybody can reach the Patentcenter web site.

To reach Patentcenter, go to this web page:  https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/.

What is Patentcenter?  Why do you care? Continue reading “USPTO opens Patentcenter to all filers”

Update:  it took more than two years, but the USPTO has just recently cleared this trouble ticket.

There’s a bit of bad grammar in Patentcenter.   If you are using Patentcenter to look at a patent application, the number of inventors might exceed four.  In that case you might click “show all inventors” to see all of the inventors.  Then you would see a Patentcenter screen listing all of the inventors, an example of which appears at right.

You might then want to return to the normal screen that does not show all of the inventors.  For this, the designers of Patentcenter chose the words “Show less inventors” which is wrong.  A similar mistake is often made in stores where an overhead sign might say that the express checkout lane is for those with “ten or less items”.  The correct wording would be “ten or fewer items”.  You can see explanations of this here and here.

The correct way to say this in Patentcenter would, of course, be “Show fewer inventors”.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes the folks at USPTO to correct this mistake.  (This is trouble ticket number CP10.)  (Update.  It took more than two years.)

(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”

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)”