Category: Patentcenter

Just now I logged in at Patent Center and tried to view my outgoing correspondence.  I was greeted with a big red error message saying Search Limit Reached.  This is bug number CP178.  I opened EBC ticket number 1-843318724.   EBC agent 50 checked with the Patent Center team and reported back that this is a feature, not a bug.  This feature blocks data mining, he explained.  Continue reading “Patent Center is not ready, and PAIR cannot be shut down tonight”

Readers will recall that originally the USPTO was firm in its commitment to a shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web at 11:59 PM on November 7, 2023 (blog article).

Readers will also recall that with less than two hours remaining before the close of business on November 7, the USPTO blinked and did not shut down PAIR and EFS-Web that day (blog article).  Instead, the USPTO postponed the shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web by four business days.  The shutdown got postponed to 11:59 PM today, November 14.

Yes, the USPTO has firmly stated today is the day that it will shut down PAIR and EFS-Web.  This will happen at 11:59 PM tonight.

On November 5, 2023, I predicted (blog article) that the USPTO leadership would take corrective action in response to the situation that EBC would often tell a caller that the way to overcome a bug in Patent Center was to go back and do the task using PAIR or EFS-Web.  And my prediction has turned out to be correct.  USPTO leadership has indeed taken corrective action about this situation.  Continue reading “USPTO leadership has taken corrective action”

One of the most striking disconnects during the October 18 meeting with Commissioner for Patents Vaishali Udupa was the topic of “what happens after a USPTO customer opens an EBC (Electronic Business Center) trouble ticket about a Patent Center bug?”  Continue reading “Waiting to hear about EBC tickets from Commissioner for Patents Udupa”

It is embarrassing to see the USPTO trying to conceal its “blink” on Patent Center that happened on November 7, 2023.  Continue reading “USPTO tries to conceal the Patent Center “blink””

It will be recalled that with less than two hours to go before the close of business on the day that the USPTO had resolutely determined that it was going to shut down the trusted PAIR and EFS-Web systems, the USPTO blinked.  (See blog article.) The USPTO decided to postpone the shutdown by four business days, from November 8 to November 15.  What excuses did the USPTO provide for this blink?  One of the excuses was that the USPTO proposed, during those four days, to “increase usability for sponsored accounts with large amounts of customer numbers”.  What exactly does this word salad mean?  Continue reading ““Increase usability for sponsored accounts with large amounts of customer numbers” means what?”

Yesterday the USPTO blinked (a little) about the planned shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web.  Here is IPWatchdog’s take on the blink.

(Update:  see this blog article for a guess as to what “increase usability for sponsored accounts with large amounts of customer numbers” means. )

For the past seven weeks, and up until just a few hours ago, the USPTO was unwavering in its stated resolve to shut down PAIR and EFS-Web at 11:59 PM tonight.  As recently as yesterday, when meeting with the National Association of Patent Practitioners, the Commissioner for Patents declined to agree to NAPP’s request to postpone the shutdown date (blog article).  Now, on the last possible day, with less than two hours to go before the close of business, the USPTO blinked.  Continue reading “A small blink from the USPTO”

The last thing you heard from me about this was on Saturday, November 4, when I reported that the National Association of Patent Practitioners (NAPP) had been invited by the USPTO to attend a videoconference meeting about Patent Center.  The USPTO made this invitation after receiving NAPP’s October 31, 2023 letter to the USPTO asking that the USPTO’s planned shutdown of PAIR and EFS-Web be postponed.  The meeting was scheduled for 11AM yesterday (ET).  Now NAPP has posted a readout of the meeting on LinkedIn.  Continue reading “NAPP met with USPTO about Patent Center yesterday”

I appreciate that the subject line does not narrow things down very much, given a seemingly limitless variety and number of ways that the USPTO has done wrong-headed things with Patent Center over the past five years of its development.  But here is a recent breathtakingly wrong-headed move by the USPTO that deserves particular comment — abruptly imposing upon all applicants an extremely disruptive and wholly unnecessary roadblock to the uploading of PDF files.   It makes Patent Center, which was already not easy to use given its many bugs, even harder to use.

Continue reading “The most recent USPTO wrong-headedness with Patent Center”