Trademark Office being helpful

Do you sometimes prepare a submission in USPTO’s TEAS system, and send it to a client so that the client may review it and maybe e-sign it?  (Examples of such a submission might include the filing of a new US trademark application or the filing of a Statement of Use.)   If so, then during the next two weeks you may wish to carry out that task in a slightly different way than the usual way.  The nice thing is that the Trademark Office is being helpful to its customers by letting them know in advance of something important that will happen about two weeks from now.

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Today is the last day to file certain PTA correction requests

I have not encountered very many patent practitioners that noticed the Federal Register notice of May 15, 2014 entitled “Revisions To Implement the Patent Term Adjustment Provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act Technical Corrections Act”.  This notice established today, July 31, 2014, as the last day on which you can file a certain type of request for adjustment of patent term.

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Astonishingly good system integration at WIPO

Just now I e-filed a PCT patent application in the Receiving Office of the International Bureau.  I did this using WIPO’s ePCT system.  And a mere sixty seconds later, I was able to click and see a draft of the front page of what will eventually be the eighteen-month publication, all the way down to the date (February 5, 2015) that it will probably be published.  I am astonished at the level of integration among WIPO’s various systems that must have been accomplished to make this possible.   Indeed there are half a dozen good things about this e-filing experience that deserve comment.

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Sign up before July 16 for the 18th annual AIPLA PCT Seminar

It’s July again, which means it is time for another AIPLA PCT Seminar.  This will be the 18th annual offering of the Seminar.  The Seminar will take place in Denver, Colorado on Monday and Tuesday July 21 and 22, and it will be offered a second time in Arlington, Virginia on Thursday and Friday July 24 and 25.  I will be among the faculty of this Seminar.  If the Seminar will take place a week from now, why is it so important to sign up before July 16?

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USPTO mishandling QPIDS

I expect that some readers of this blog have made use of QPIDS, the Quick Path Information Disclosure Statement system.  The goal of QPIDS is to reduce the number of times that an applicant has to pay an RCE fee to get an IDS considered.  Unfortunately in recent times USPTO has been mishandling the QPIDS system.  The result is that often an applicant is stuck paying even more money than the applicant would have had to pay if the applicant had simply filed an RCE instead of a QPIDS.

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More on USPTO’s total system crash on May 14

Most readers of this blog were affected one way or another by USPTO’s total crash of all patent-related e-commerce systems on Wednesday, May 14.  I blogged about the crash here and here.  I faxed a letter to Acting Director Lee on May 17 about the crash.  In my letter, among other things I asked her to do whatever was necessary to waive the $400 penalty that would normally be imposed on a filer that failed to e-file on May 14 and instead was forced by USPTO’s crash to file by postal service or by hand carry to the USPTO.

More than a month came and went, with no word from Acting Director Lee in response to my faxed letter.  This despite my having telephoned Acting Director Lee’s office once a week or so since May 17, asking if someone could at least confirm receipt of the fax and maybe tell me who had been given the task of responding to the fax.

A few days ago I decided to work out how exactly Acting Director Lee could accomplish the waiver of the penalty. Continue reading “More on USPTO’s total system crash on May 14”

USPTO misses a chance to do the right thing about its May 14 system crash

USPTO imposes a $400 penalty on those who paper-file a patent application instead of e-filing it.  The policy reason is, of course, to make people e-file.  But USPTO’s e-filing system had a total crash (blog post) on Wednesday, May 14, that made it impossible for USPTO customers to e-file their patent applications.  This forced customers to paper-file (for example by going to the Post Office).

The right thing, of course, would be for USPTO to waive the $400 penalty for filings carried out on May 14.  But no …

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