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Disruptive technologies in nondescript boxes

I’ve blogged about many different disruptive consumer technologies.  I’ve blogged about VOIP telephone services (which is an over-the-top way of replacing a traditional landline).  I’ve blogged about streaming media sticks such as the Amazon Fire TV stick, the Roku stick, and the Chromecast stick.  I’ve blogged about the Tablo, a television receiver and digital video recorder that permits time-shifting and place-shifting your viewing of broadcast television programs.

What’s pretty interesting, I think, is what all of these technologies have in common.  Of course one thing they all have in common is that they rely on internet connectivity.  But the other thing they all have in common is their bland, featureless, nondescript boxes. Continue reading “Disruptive technologies in nondescript boxes”

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Baby steps toward cord-cutting

Over the past year or so I have been making baby steps toward “cutting the cord”, which in my case means maybe some day discontinuing service from DirecTV. (For others, “cord cutting” might mean discontinuing television service from Comcast or Dish or Time-Warner.)  In past blog articles I have written about the best media stick to use when traveling and over-the-top service from HBO.  For my household it was a big step to drop the HBO service from DirecTV and to use HBO Now instead.

But there is a category of television reception that I have found to be harder to tackle, namely the reception of “local” network broadcast stations.  Where I live in the mountains of Colorado there are precisely no broadcast television stations.  For many, many years my household has been paying DirecTV to provide “local” television stations, by which I mean the Denver television stations.  I can’t receive the Denver stations at my home, because a mountain range blocks the signal.  Some of my neighbors pay Comcast cable to provide those same “local” television stations to them.  The point is that a would-be cord-cutter who lives in a place with few or no broadcast television signals faces the question what to do about picking up network broadcast stations.

The usual cord-cutting approach for most households is to use an antenna to receive over-the-air television signals.  But as I say, that approach doesn’t work where I live in the mountains of Colorado.  I’ve stumbled upon a new approach that may finally permit discontinuing all DirecTV service. Continue reading “Baby steps toward cord-cutting”

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Continued aftermath of massive USPTO system crash

(See followup article here.)

Yes the USPTO managed to get its systems more or less functioning by December 28 after the massive crash that ran from December 22 to 27.  But even now, two weeks after the crash, applicants are still affected by it daily.

As one example, there was a response to an Office Action that we had hoped to e-file in EFS-Web on December 22.  No luck there, the system crash made it impossible to e-file anything then or for some days thereafter.  So in this particular case we fax-filed the response.  We did that on December 26.

More than a week has passed — five business days — and there is no hint or suggestion in PAIR that we filed a response.  Nothing is visible in IFW.  Nothing is listed in the Transaction History.

The Office Action to which we responded was one that said “do X and I will allow the case”.  The response which we fax-filed does X.  This response, if only it were visible to the Examiner, would permit the Examiner to dispose of the case.  It would permit our client to receive a Notice of Allowance and to pay the Issue Fee.

But I’d guess that ten times more papers got fax-filed during the period of December 22-27 than would typically have been fax-filed during a normal six-day period.  In our experience it normally takes the USPTO a week or more to get a fax-filed document into IFW.  I imagine that it will take six weeks or longer for USPTO to work its way out of the massive fax backlog that USPTO now faces.

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USPTO site works best in modern web browsers?

Every fiftieth visit or so to the USPTO web site triggers a pop-up Customer Satisfaction Survey.   The survey asks things like “How likely are you to return to uspto.gov?” (question 16) and “Do you intend to contact the USPTO Customer Support Centers to get information that you couldn’t find on the USPTO website?”  (question 24.3)  I have encountered this survey many dozens of times in recent months.

Today the survey popped up again for me, and I filled it out.  The question that stuck in my mind the most today was this one:

The USPTO site works best in modern web browsers. Is there a barrier that prevents you from using the most up-to-date browsers?  (question 30)

The problem with this question is its false premise.  It’s just not true that the USPTO site works best in modern web browsers.  Here are two counterexamples:

  1. Private PAIR and EFS-Web don’t work in Chrome or Microsoft Edge.
  2. If you try to do a TEAS filing in Chrome, you will find that the editing buttons (buttons for italic and bold and indenting etc.) are missing.

USPTO ought to scrap the Entrust Java applet that it uses in PAIR and EFS-Web, as I blogged in May of 2014.

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Get your numbers in for the 2015 Design Patent Toteboard

A year ago I published the 2014 Design Patent Toteboard.  Now it’s time to finalize and publish the 2015 Design Patent Toteboard.

The goal of this toteboard is to list the firms that helped clients to obtain US design patents in 2015.  It will rank the firms according to the number of US design patents obtained.  Respondents are asked to report only US design patents for which the firm is listed on the front page of the granted patent.  Please respond by January 15, 2015.

To respond, click here.

 

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USPTO does the right thing on trademark fees relating to the outage

On December 24 I blogged about things the USPTO needs to do to remediate the problems that flowed from the massive USPTO system outage December 22-27.  I wrote:

The TEAS-Plus system imposes a $50 per trademark class penalty on any filer of a “Plus” or “RF” (reduced fee) application who files a response by means other than e-filing.  USPTO needs to not impose that penalty on those who responded to a Plus or RF office action by means other than e-filing during this system crash time.

I am delighted to be able to report that now, December 31, the USPTO has addressed this problem.   Continue reading “USPTO does the right thing on trademark fees relating to the outage”

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Blazing fast free wifi

I have been seeing a bit of a trend lately.  The trend is free wifi that is blafast-wifizing fast, many tens of megabits per second both up and down.

At right is a speed test result for the free wifi in the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin.  And this did not even require me to accept some terms and conditions.

Some time ago a friend was in the new Whitney museum in Manhattan.  Again blazing fast, eighty megs down and fifty megs up.  And again no need to accept terms and conditions.

It’s nice when this happens.

What’s the fastest free wifi you have encountered?  Please post a comment.

The last time I tried to use the public wifi at the USPTO, which was a few months ago, the login process was so cumbersome that eventually I gave up and used my own wifi hotspot instead.  The last time I did successfully log in to the public wifi at the USPTO, which was a few months before that, it was embarrassingly slow, slower than 100K bits per second up or down.  Basically voice phone modem speeds.

Can someone who has recently made use of the public wifi at the USPTO share a comment about how fast the wifi was, and how easy or difficult the login process was?

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Recycling ADS data from a parent case

For many years it has been possible to recycle ADS bibliographic (“bib”) data from a parent case into a child case.  To do this, you find the old ADS and export the bib data in XML format.  Then you import the XML file into a new ADS.  Often you will find that before you import the XML file into the new ADS, you need to edit the XML file using Notepad.

USPTO has just announced a new EFS-Web functionality with the catchy name Enhanced Initial Web-based Application Data Sheet.  I’ll call it EIWADS.

Continue reading “Recycling ADS data from a parent case”

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USPTO’s new “Corrected Web-based Application Data Sheet”

On November 22 I offered suggestions (see blog post here) as to how USPTO could do better in receiving updated bibliographic data.  I also blogged about what was at that time the Best Practice for updating bib data.

On December 21, USPTO announced its new Corrected Web-based Application Data Sheet functionality.  I will describe it in this post.  I think it will probably be a Best Practice to use this functionality (for the applications for which it may be used) rather than legacy practice.

Continue reading “USPTO’s new “Corrected Web-based Application Data Sheet””