Bluesky: @oppedahl.com
(Update: an alert reader has discovered an undocumented feature of Patentcenter that takes a step in the direction of fixing trouble ticket CP12. See blog article.)
The USPTO people are probably going to say that in the March 17, 2023 version of Patentcenter, they think they have fixed trouble ticket CP12. But they have not fixed trouble ticket CP12. Continue reading “CP12 has not been fixed”
Are you in one of these 13 countries?
If so, can you please let me know whether your DAS Depositing Office charges a fee for a DAS access code? Please see this page where I am trying to collect all of the answers that kind readers have provided.
It will be recalled that the Patentcenter listserv has secured an hour-long meeting with USPTO’s Chief Information Officer, Jamie Holcombe, on Thursday, March 23. This will run from 11AM to noon Eastern Time. I reported this to you in a blog article dated February 7, 2023. There are two developments about this. Continue reading “The upcoming meeting with USPTO about Patentcenter redux”
Loyal readers will recall that recently I did a large number of test welds to measure welding currents generated by my new inexpensive stick welder (blog article). I had been using my smart phone to log real-time current measurements via Bluetooth from a clamp-on DC ammeter (blog article). Part way through the large number of test welds, I was astonished to see that my smart phone had powered itself down. I tapped the power button and coaxed the phone back to life and completed my current logging activities, and eventually figured out why the phone had so mysteriously and abruptly powered itself off. A tiny bit of hot steel from one of my test welds had flown several feet and had landed on the glass screen of the phone, and had melted a small crater in the glass. You can see the crater, which is less than one-fourth of a millimeter in diameter, in the photomicrograph above. After about a day, cracks had traveled from this crater across the full expanse of the glass. I realized I would need to learn how to replace the screen. This blog article describes it. Continue reading “Replacing a screen of a smart phone”
I have consolidated the information about fees charged by DAS Depositing Offices here.
The March 17 version of Patentcenter was clearly not tested before release. It breaks many things that worked properly in the pre-March 17 version. This has given rise to at least ten new trouble tickets in the Patentcenter Trouble Ticket page. Continue reading “March 17 version of Patentcenter breaks things that worked in previous version”
Hello readers. Some will recall that I am now three lectures into a sixteen-lecture series of webinars about ePCT. I am pleased to report that I was successful in recording each of those first three webinars. The recordings are now available for viewing! Continue reading “Recorded ePCT webinars are now available for viewing”
Today the USPTO rolled out its “modernized look and feel” version of Patentcenter. It contains lots of new content-free “icons” that take up valuable screen space, wasting pixels and forcing users to scroll further down to reach what they need. Continue reading “Pixel waste in content-free icons in the “modernized look and feel” Patentcenter”
One of the easiest things to get wrong, for some programmers in some programming languages, are “boundary values”. Here we see a classic example of a boundary-value mistake by the developers of Patentcenter. Continue reading “A boundary-value programming mistake in Patentcenter”
Hello folks. Here is a warning that I saw today in a USPTO system when I was paying a government fee in Financial Manager:
Credit/Debit Card Expiration Dates
Due to a recent system upgrade, some card expiration dates may have been converted to an incorrect month for cards stored within Financial Manager. …
Try to guess, dear reader, what the next few words were. For example, maybe the next few words explained that the USPTO was working to restore the expiration dates to their correct values, but that this might take a day or two, and they apologize for the inconvenience. Continue reading “USPTO corrupts credit card expiration dates in FM”