QPIDS is pretty good but it could be much better. The point of QPIDS, of course, is that sometimes you find an urgent need to file an IDS at a time when, unfortunately, the Issue Fee has already been paid. Before QPIDS, most applicants facing such a problem were stuck filing (and paying for) an RCE, with all of the drawbacks that come with it.
Dealing with the January 5 problem
Applicants probably need to start thinking now about what they will do if the USPTO eventually concludes that it will never be able to recover the day’s worth of patent applications that were filed on January 5. I say this because even now, on January 14, 2015, many thousands of patent applications filed on January 5 are missing from PAIR. This blog post reviews the sequence of events thus far and talks about what applicants may need to do about this problem at the USPTO.
USPTO e-commerce systems continue to stumble
USPTO online systems continue to stumble or crash. Much of this, I expect, is a consequence of cobbled-together temporary fixes to the massive UPS failures that happened on December 22. Here’s a brief recap of today’s situation:
- Newly filed patent applications and entries into the US national phase that were filed on January 5 seem to have been lost. USPTO is trying to recover them but after more than a week they have not been recovered. See further comments on this “January 5 problem” in a later blog post.
- EFS-Web petitions that are supposed to be auto-granted are all broken. We have a case that is scheduled to issue next Tuesday and we need to get it withdrawn from issue. The auto-granting petition in EFS-Web keeps freezing and crashing. EBC has acknowledged this as a known problem. Hopefully USPTO will get this system repaired before next Tuesday.
- Document display within TSDR has been on-again-off-again for the past couple of days. As of right this moment it is on again.
- ETAS sometimes crashes when you try to pay the recordation fee. (EPAS does not have this problem because of course patent recordations are free of charge!) There is a complicated workaround that involves saving the submission and taking off your shoes and putting them back on again. (Just kidding.)
- Visibility of recently filed documents in IFW is nonexistent. Newly filed documents are supposed to be visible within one hour. We are pretty consistently seeing delays of 18 hours or more before a document is visible in IFW. This is a Big Problem.
- EFS-Web ack receipts and fee payment pages are flaky. This happened to many cases filed December 22 and December 27. Even now as of January 14, USPTO has not yet provided accurate ack receipts and fee payment pages. This is happening again now on new EFS-Web filings as of January 13. The short-term survival steps for customers include checking the “fees” tab in PAIR and looking up the transaction in Financial Profile.
The “Bowie bond”
David Bowie enriched the world in many ways, innovating in musical performance, film, theater, and dance. How many of us are aware that one of his innovations was the securitized intellectual property right — the “Bowie bond”? Continue reading “The “Bowie bond””
Patent applications filed January 5 still missing in PAIR
Today is Monday, January 11. As of today there are still many patent applications which applicants filed on Tuesday, January 5, that are lost within the USPTO. They cannot be viewed in PAIR. I reported this problem on January 8.
It is puzzling that this loss of newly filed patent applications is not mentioned at the USPTO Systems Status and Availability page.
We filed ten new US patent applications that day. And we entered the US national phase in one case on that day. And we cannot see any of those filings in PAIR. USPTO’s internal standard is that a newly filed document should be visible in PAIR within one hour.
We reported these lost patent applications to the EBC, and this is what we heard back from the EBC:
Thank you for contacting the Electronic Business Center regarding this matter. We are currently experiencing issues with applications that were filed on 1/5/2016 not loading into the system properly which caused issues with paying fees and users are experiencing issues with trying to log back into the system to pay fees later or bringing the application up in Private Pair to view. The USPTO is aware of the matter and are currently working to resolve those issues. We apologize for the inconveniences.
We have seen many, many cases where it took longer than it should have taken for something filed in EFS-Web to become visible in PAIR. But this delay of six days is unprecedented.
Things that got fax-filed during the massive USPTO outage
As I mentioned here, one of the open questions was how long it would take the USPTO to get around to processing the large number of fax and paper filings that filers filed in desperation during the outage of all USPTO systems from December 22 to December 27.
There is a document that we fax-filed on December 26. And since December 26 we kept checking PAIR every day to see when USPTO people would get around to posting the document to IFW.
The document finally turned up in IFW on January 6. In other words, it took eleven days for the USPTO to take this fax and put it into IFW.
We’re still not out of the woods on this, because of course the mere presence of a document in IFW does not permit the Examiner to actually do anything with the document. Once the document gets into IFW, it has to pass through various reviews by paralegals and Legal Instruments Examiners. Only after they have all blessed the document will it get forwarded to the Examiner. Today is January 8 and the paralegals and LIEs have not yet processed this document.
Maybe the biggest loser in this débacle was the hapless Examiner. Recall that this was a finally rejected case in which the Examiner had said if we were to do X, she could allow the case. And the document, which we had been trying to e-file since December 22, did X. If things had proceeded normally, the Examiner could have disposed of the case (through allowance) within the calendar quarter ending December 31. Instead this case is still dragging on in January, and even now the Examiner is not able to dispose of the case. The Examiner will not even be able to dispose of the case within the present biweek.
The client also loses out. This case will eventually get issued, but the issue date will be at least two weeks later than it should have been. The client will lose two weeks of patent term with this débacle. (The Patent Term Adjustment process will probably not help in this particular case.)
Office of Patent Petitions backlog worsens
The policy goals of the Patent Prosecution Highway are served only if PPH requests are granted promptly. Unfortunately the USPTO is failing to grant PPH requests promptly, and things are getting worse instead of better. Here’s the latest. Continue reading “Office of Patent Petitions backlog worsens”
Patent applications filed January 5 disappear
Our office e-filed a dozen patent applications at the USPTO on January 5, 2016. Today is January 8 and even now, not one of these patent applications is visible in PAIR.
What we have heard from the Electronic Business Center is that this is a known problem. Other filers who filed patent applications on January 5 have likewise been unable to see the applications in PAIR.
Let’s hope that the USPTO gets this problem straightened out soon.
This sort of problem at the USPTO is yet another reason to file a new PCT application in the RO/IB rather than RO/US. Newly filed PCT applications at RO/IB (if filed electronically using an ePCT eOwnership code) are visible in ePCT instantly.
As a reminder, a US-based would-be filer in RO/IB needs to make sure that either (a) the invention was not made in the US, or (b) a Foreign Filing License has already been obtained, perhaps through the priority document.
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”
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”