Ant-Like Persistence

Patent Center bug CP151, which is one of the “high priority ticket” bugs, got quietly fixed by the USPTO within the past 36 hours.  This would have been the ideal time for the USPTO to fix Patent Center bug CP31, which is also a “high priority ticket” bug and has been outstanding for more than three years now, but the USPTO failed to do that.  Continue reading “CP151 cleared, CP31 still not cleared”

One hundred thirty-seven intellectual property professionals have written to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, asking for regulatory action regarding the USPTO’s handling of Patent Center and Private PAIR and EFS-Web.  The letter is dated today, October 9, 2023.  You can see it on SSRN (https://ssrn.com/abstract=4597405) and it is archived here.  The letter asks that OIRA do three things:

• • Remind the USPTO that it may not impose a burden of this magnitude without an ICR clearance.  Decommission of incumbent, working software should be postponed until the USPTO’s new replacement software demonstrates a level of reliability that provides practical utility. Decommission should be postponed until the PTO has a clearance obtained after full public comment. The PTO has done none of these things.
  • Remind the PTO that Information Quality principles govern the PTO’s decisionmaking.  Readiness and quality reviews of the new software on which the PTO relies are “influential,” and should meet requirements for objectivity, utility, integrity, and reproducibility, and public consultation. Software utility, quality, and readiness must be assessed from the point of view of the PTO’s users, not the PTO’s staff. The PTO has not done so.
  • Exercise its authority under 44 U.S.C. § 3504(a) and (h) to “oversee the implementation of policies, principles, standards, and guidelines for information technology functions and activities of the Federal Government, including periodic evaluations of major information systems” to ensure that the PTO’s major information systems are designed to achieve agency missions. As we note below, the PTO’s software engineering and quality processes are suspect.

If only USPTO leadership people who are responsible for Patent Center could extend to USPTO’s customers the courtesy of …

• • returning telephone calls, or
  • replying to paper letters, or
  • answering emails.

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:  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?

• • 455 respondents (89%) said no, they would not be comfortable with that.
  • only 58 respondents (11%) said yes, this should be fine.

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.