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Hello loyal readers. A couple of days ago, this blog got hacked. Instead of the usual “Ant-Like Persistence” page, it was a mostly blank page asking the visitor to type in a password.
Several nice people dropped emails to me to let me know they had noticed the problem.
I will describe what had gone wrong and what I did to fix the hack. Continue reading “Dealing with a hack”
If only USPTO leadership people who are responsible for Patent Center could extend to USPTO’s customers the courtesy of …
If only the Commissioner for Patents could have answered a paper letter that Seventy-Four Members of the Patent Center Listserv sent to him about Patent Center on December 16, 2021. He never replied to that letter.
If only the Director of the USPTO, Kathi Vidal, could have answered an email message that the Patent Center Listserv sent to her about Patent Center on June 9, 2023. She never answered that email.
If only the Assistant Commissioner for Patents could answer an email message that the Patent Center Listserv sent to him about Patent Center on July 11, 2023. He has not answered that email.
If only the Commissioner for Patents, Vaishali Udupa, could answer an email message that the Patent Center Listserv sent to her about Patent Center on July 25, 2023. She has not answered that email.
If only the Assistant Commissioner for Patents could return a telephone message that the Patent Center Listserv left for him about Patent Center on September 18, 2023, asking him about the unanswered email of July 11, 2023 mentioned above. He has not returned our call.
If only the Director of the USPTO, Kathi Vidal, could answer a paper letter that One Hundred Seventy-Eight Members of the Patent Center Listserv sent to her about Patent Center on September 29, 2023. She has not replied to that letter.
If only the Commissioner for Patents, Vaishali Udupa, could answer an email message that the Patent Center Listserv sent to her about Patent Center on September 30, 2023. She has not answered that email.
If only the Director of the USPTO, Kathi Vidal, could answer an Offer of Compromise that the Patent Center Listserv sent to her as a paper letter on September 30, 2023. She has not replied to that Offer of Compromise.
When high-up USPTO people who are responsible for Patent Center fail to return telephone calls, and fail to reply to paper letters, and fail to answer emails, what should customers do?
(Update: No, folks, today is not the day. Sorry about that. The posting quoted below was an automatic, scheduled posting that I had scheduled many months ago. But see this Federal Register notice dated September 12, 2023 in which the USPTO says that October 7, 2023 is not the day. Instead, this change will happen at some unspecified time in “the spring or early summer of 2024”.)
Yes, folks, today is the day. Starting today, you only get three months to respond to a USPTO post-reg trademark Office Action instead of the usual six months. I told you all about this back on October 12, 2022 (blog article) and on December 3, 2022 (blog article). This article hopefully answers some of your questions about this change.
Does this affect the response period for post-reg Office Actions mailed yesterday or before? No. This affects only the response period for post-reg Office Actions mailed today (Saturday, October 7, 2023) or after today.
What if I need more than three months? If you need more than three months, you can purchase the remaining three months (restoring the response period to the statutory six months) by paying $125.
So this works just like extensions of time in USPTO patent cases? No! It is quite different, in many ways, as this table details.
| Patent | Trademark | |
| small entity or micro costs less? | yes | no |
| you can get one, two, or three months of extension? (or four or five months for certain steps) | yes you get to pick | no, you can only get three months of extension, no more and no less |
| when you must pay? | you may pay in arrears | You must pay before the three months has run out |
| how much money? | $55 to $3160 depending on entity size and number of months of extension | $125 |
Madrid cases? No, this does not apply to cases with a 66a filing basis (US designations from international trademark registrations). Those cases will continue to get the full statutory six-month response period.
Gotchas? Yes, there will be gotchas. If you respond within the three-month period, but if the post-reg person says you have failed to “respond to all issues”, whatever that means, then your case will have gone abandoned and you will have to petition to revive.
Suppose you respond within the three-month period, and you supposedly fail to “respond to all issues”, and there is still some time left before the end of the three-month period, and the post-reg person delivers this bad news to you before the end of the three-month period. In such a case, the post-reg person will let you know that to avoid abandonment, you can pay the $125 fee to purchase the remaining three months of response time.
As alert reader Michael Brown points out, the EA might choose to give you a 30-day “mulligan” if the EA decides that your response that failed to be “complete” was nonetheless “substantially complete”. See blog article.
(Update: a week has passed and Director Vidal has not responded to our Offer of Compromise. See blog article.)
This blog post describes an offer of compromise about the shutdown of Private PAIR and EFS-Web which we at the Patentcenter Listserv have extended to the USPTO today. We hope the USPTO will accept it. Continue reading “An offer of compromise to the USPTO”
The USPTO has announced it plans to shut down EFS-Web (and Private PAIR) on November 8. This is because, supposedly, Patent Center provides “100%” of the functions of EFS-Web and Private PAIR. (This is a pants-on-fire lie, as the 187 signers explain to Director Vidal.) So anyway, the real situation is that the USPTO actually admits that it must not shut down EFS-Web, as will now be described. Continue reading “USPTO admits it cannot shut down EFS-Web”
The USPTO announced last Wednesday, September 20, 2023 that it has picked November 8, 2023 as the date that it will shut down Private PAIR and EFS-Web. In doing so, the USPTO was communicating its view that supposely Patent Center is ready to be taken out of beta test, and is ready to be placed into production service, supposedly doing everything that Private PAIR does and everything that EFS-Web does.
One hundred seventy-eight members of the Patentcenter Listserv have sent a letter to USPTO Director Kathi Vidal (details here) today telling her that the USPTO is mistaken about this.
But the Patentcenter Listserv is not the only group that is trying to get USPTO Director Kathi Vidal to realize that Patent Center is not ready. The American Intellectual Property Law Association has also tried to get her to realize this. AIPLA carried out a survey in June of 2023 of actual users of Private PAIR, EFS-Web, and Patent Center. Here are the results of the survey (presentation slides). Here are some of the findings of the survey. Respondents were asked:
Would you be comfortable with Private PAIR and EFS Web being shut down in favor of PatentCenter by sometime later this summer?
Respondents were asked:
In your opinion, how ready is PatentCenter for full day-to-day use (without Private PAIR or EFS Web as a backup)? The possible answers were on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 means “fully ready”. Here are the responses:
A mere 2% of respondents said that PatentCenter is “fully ready”. Even the next step down, a response of “4”, elicited a mere 6% of responses. A staggering 92% of responses were in the bottom three values of 3, 2, or 1.
These slides have been presented to Director Vidal by AIPLA representatives. To say this plainly, Director Vidal has seen these slides. But despite the Director having seen these slides, the USPTO announced on September 20, 2023 that it is shutting down Private PAIR and EFS-Web on November 8, 2023.
Here is a PDF copy of a letter that got sent today to USPTO Director Kathi Vidal about Patent Center. The letter, dated September 29, 2023, is from One Hundred Seventy-Eight Members of the Patent Center Listserv. An HTML copy of the letter, with clickable links, may be seen here.
The emailed PDF copy of the letter got sent early in the morning of Friday, September 29th. The paper copy of the letter to Director Vidal, sent by USPS, got delivered this morning, Monday, October 2 (click here to see tracking). Here is the opening paragraph of the letter:
This is an urgent matter for your personal attention. We write to ask that decommissioning of the USPTO’s two main software systems for patent applicants, Private PAIR and EFS-Web, currently announced for November 8, 2023, be delayed until Patent Center is complete and robust. These software systems are the USPTO’s primary interface, critical-path linchpins for the entire US patent system. This letter identifies a number of individual defects in the Patent Center software. The pattern of software defects suggests something larger and more important—defects in the USPTO’s software development process. We suggest that the USPTO’s current process trajectory cannot bring Patent Center to acceptable functionality or quality in six weeks. These issues require your personal attention, and cannot be delegated.
I certainly hope that Director Vidal will read the letter carefully and will give much thought to the letter.
I am hoping to collect some fairly comprehensive information about where the charging ports are on EVs and PHEVs that are used in the US.
At this article you can see information about charging port locations on European vehicles. My hope is to do the same for America vehicles.
Are you in the US? Do you have an EV or a PHEV? If so, I would be very grateful if you could share the location of your charging port. To respond, click here.
The questionnaire also asks if you have an EV charger at home, and whether you have any adapters for charging at other kinds of charging stations.
Thank you for helping.
Update: the letter has been sent.
Hello dear readers. At https://blog.oppedahl.com/?page_id=9872 you can see a letter that is now “locked” for you to sign. This is about the USPTO’s scheduled shutdown of Private PAIR and EFS-Web on November 8, 2023.
As of right now the people who have already signed add up to over seventy signers. They have between them paid over $38 million to the USPTO in the past decade. They have between them prosecuted more than 32K US patents to issuance in the past decade.
I plan to close the signature system by about the early morning of Friday the 29th. I plan to send out the letter in the middle of the day on Friday the 29th. If you are willing to sign, please do so now rather than postponing your signature until Friday the 29th.
To learn more about the Patentcenter listserv, or to join, click here.
Hello dear readers. At https://blog.oppedahl.com/?page_id=9872 you can see a letter that I plan to post for signature by members of the Patentcenter listserv. This is about the USPTO’s scheduled shutdown of Private PAIR and EFS-Web on November 8, 2023. I welcome corrections and suggestions for improvement of the letter. Please post proposed corrections and suggestions on the Patentcenter listserv, or send them to me privately. Please do this by about the morning of Tuesday, September 26.
To learn more about the Patentcenter listserv, or to join, click here. If you want to be able to sign the letter once it gets finalized, and if you are not already a member of the listserv, please join the listserv.