Ant-Like Persistence

January 5, 2022

A new blog

Here is a new blog. See https://www.starlink-user.com/ .

January 4, 2022

Traps for the unwary in PCT small entity status

When I was first in practice, the only way to gain “small entity” status as a US patent filer was by filing a “small entity status form”. It was thus a pretty big deal in the year 2000 when the USPTO published a Federal Register notice (65 FR 54603, September 8, 2000) which pretty much eliminated the need for small entity status forms. Oversimplifying slightly, starting on November 7, 2000, a patent applicant in the USPTO was able to gain small entity status by the simple step of paying a government fee at the small entity rate. Except not! PCT filers sometimes find to their great disappointment that is is not really true that you can always gain gain small entity status by the simple step of paying a government fee at the small entity rate. Continue reading “Traps for the unwary in PCT small entity status”

January 2, 2022

What the rolling electrical blackouts in the mountains of Colorado on December 30th were all about

It turns out that the rolling electrical blackouts in the mountains of Colorado on December 30, which were a consequence of the devastating Marshall wildfire in Boulder Country, Colorado, were about the gas company avoiding having to relight pilot lights!

If there is anything that the gas company hates doing, it is having to send out workers to go from door to door to relight everybody’s pilot lights. Continue reading “What the rolling electrical blackouts in the mountains of Colorado on December 30th were all about”

December 25, 2021

L2 is crowded

I imagine that most readers have been closely following the launch of the Webb telescope and the successful deployment of its solar panels. As we all know, it is headed toward a particular place in space called the Earth-Sun Second Lagrange Point, shorthanded as L2. I was intrigued to learn that L2 is actually a crowded place. Continue reading “L2 is crowded”

December 21, 2021

All USPTO systems seem to be broken

It looks like all USPTO systems (TEAS, MyUSPTO, Patentcenter, EFS-Web, PAIR) are broken or very very sluggish. Listserv members are reporting timeouts, forced logouts, and lack of responsiveness from the USPTO systems.

As is so often the case during such crashes, there is no mention or acknowledgment of any of this on the USPTO system status page.

December 21, 2021

Upcoming federal holidays and the USPTO

Friday, December 24, 2021 will be a federal holiday in the District of Columbia. This means the USPTO will be closed that day. This means that any action that might be due at the USPTO on December 24 or December 25 or December 26 will be timely if accomplished by Monday, December 27, 2021.

Friday, December 31, 2021 will be a federal holiday in the District of Columbia. This means the USPTO will be closed that day. This means that any action that might be due at the USPTO on December 31 or January 1 or January 2 will be timely if accomplished by Monday, January 3, 2022.

December 17, 2021

A long-felt need in the TEAS system

The TEAS system is the system that trademark practitioners use to generate documents to be reviewed and e-signed by clients. A typical form to be reviewed and signed by a client might be a new trademark application or a six-year renewal or a ten-year renewal. There is a sort of design flaw in the TEAS system that represents a long-felt need for correction. This blog article describes the design flaw and describes two possible ways to address the design flaw. Continue reading “A long-felt need in the TEAS system”

December 16, 2021

Now the USPTO says why everything crashed

Here is what the USPTO announced a few minutes ago about the massive system crash that started yesterday evening:

On Wednesday, December 15, 2021, at approximately 8:30 p.m. ET, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) proactively and deliberately shut down all external access to systems in light of a serious and time-sensitive concern related to Log4j vulnerabilities. Although this preventative measure impacted those seeking to file documents, the USPTO needed to shut down the systems to perform necessary maintenance to safeguard not only our infrastructure, but also the security of our filers’ data. The USPTO created a path for filers to continue to submit applications via email during the outage. Around 8:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, December 16, maintenance was completed and all external systems were restored.

Several things can be said about this.

First, the USPTO announcement is not accurate about the start time of the crash. USPTO customers started seeing login problems at about 7PM Eastern Time.

Second, I will note that alert blog reader Chris called it! Chris posted a comment very early this morning that you can see here (scroll down a bit) correctly guessing that this would turn out to be USPTO’s explanation for the outage.

Third, yes we have all been reading about Log4j vulnerabilities and yes of course it is prudent to take whatever steps one needs to take to protect against those vulnerabilities. But this particular vulnerability was publicly disclosed on Thursday, December 9. Nowhere in the USPTO announcement is there any explanation as to why the corrective action was taken only six days later. Nor is there any explanation why the starting time selected for this work was during working hours (for USPTO customers) rather than at the normal time for such corrective actions which is shortly past midnight on whatever day the work is to be done.

December 16, 2021