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Dealing with a VOIP denial-of-service attack

Some years ago our law firm migrated away from every old-fashioned landline telephone provider that we used to use, and we moved everything about our telephone service to a Canadian VOIP telephone company called VOIP.MS.  I have blogged frequently about my satisfaction generally with the use of VOIP rather than older ways of getting telephone service, and I have blogged frequently about my satisfaction in particular with this company as a provider of such services.

Which then leads to a sense of wonder and frustration to see that somebody has chosen to bring a denial-of-service attack against the VOIP.MS company, and has asked that a bitcoin ransom be paid for the DDOS attack to cease.  (See Ars Technica article.)  This has led to various disruptions in service for many of the 80,000 or so customers of VOIP.MS, some of which (as for my firm) have been intermittent and some of which (for some customers) have been pretty much continuous.

What can a customer do about this, if anything?  Continue reading “Dealing with a VOIP denial-of-service attack”

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A hard-to-get circuit breaker

The 50-ampere circuit breaker shown in the photograph at right is a very cleverly designed device called a “quad two-pole common-trip” circuit breaker.  It is actually four circuit breakers that have been squeezed into the physical space that would normally house two circuit breakers.  The two circuit breakers in the middle are mechanically linked by a cylindrical bar so that if one of them trips, they both turn off.  The outer two circuit breakers are linked by a stainless steel frame that, remarkably, accomplishes the same “common trip” function for the outer two breakers.  Why, today’s blog article asks, is this circuit breaker nearly impossible to find right now in September of 2021? Continue reading “A hard-to-get circuit breaker”

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Thinking more about problem solving

A colleague of mine was wrestling with a homework problem that had been given to her schoolchild:

Jan has 35 teaspoons of chocolate cocoa mix and 45 teaspoons of french vanilla cocoa mix.   She wants to put the same amount of mix into each jar, and she only wants one flavor of mix in each jar.  She wants to fill as many jars as possible.  how many jars of french vanilla cocoa mix will Jan fill?

Continue reading “Thinking more about problem solving”

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Thinking about problem solving

A recent column in the New York Times started with a math word problem, which I will oversimplify slightly here:

Sarah takes six hours to paint a fence, and John takes twelve hours to paint the same fence.  How long will it take them to paint the same fence if they work together?

One thing that is really fun about this problem, I think, is that it turns out this is exactly like asking “what resistance do you get if you put a six-ohm resistor and a twelve-ohm resistor in parallel?” Continue reading “Thinking about problem solving”

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Upcoming PCT webinars – eHandshakes-Access Rights-eOwnership

WIPO has two upcoming PCT webinars.  

In this webinar you will be guided through the different steps on how to establish eHandshakes, create an access rights group, manage/share access rights and request eOwnership of already filed PCT applications.  Your presenters are Pascal Piriou and Jiao Mo.  

Tuesday 07 September : 09-10.30 am (Asia, India, Europe time zones…)

Registration link: https://wipo-int.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lVwEVDu_TxSOwi7IUJZFXw

Wednesday 08 September: 4:30-6:00 pm (America time zones)

Registration link: https://wipo-int.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EbCdVUgTSSOUbcaPlvmonA

 

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How it is going with feature requests and enhancements for Patentcenter

In a previous blog article I reviewed USPTO’s progress with fixing known bugs in Patentcenter.  In this blog article I now review USPTO’s progress in implementing feature requests and enhancements that beta users have asked USPTO to provide in Patentcenter.

By way of comparison, patent practitioners are accustomed to the responsiveness of WIPO when users suggest improvements and enhancements to the ePCT system.  It is commonplace to see user-friendly features that get added to ePCT specifically because users have asked for them.  WIPO personnel are subscribed to all of the relevant listservs and user groups for PCT users, and frequently it will be seen that a bug will get fixed or a feature will get added specifically because a WIPO person will have responded to a question or a comment in a listserv or in a discussion group.

If you have not already done so, you should join the PCT listserv and the Patentcenter listserv.

With this background, one might hope that USPTO would from time to time respond to suggestions and feature requests from user groups by implementing requested features or enhancements in Patentcenter.  It is this hope that prompted me to carry out a review recently of the Patentcenter feature request list to see what progress USPTO has made.  This blog article summarizes my findings.  Continue reading “How it is going with feature requests and enhancements for Patentcenter”

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How things are going with bug fixes in USPTO’s Patentcenter

Patentcenter is still nominally in beta test, but USPTO seems to be plowing ahead with its plans to force all applicants to e-file patent applications in Microsoft Word format (the Microsoft Word dialect of DOCX) and has long ago stopped any development or feature enhancements for EFS-Web or PAIR.  USPTO has said it will shut down EFS-Web and PAIR and users will have no choice but to use Patentcenter to do the things that have in the past been done through EFS-Web and PAIR.  So what is the progress at the USPTO with fixing the known bugs in Patentcenter? 

There is a Patentcenter beta tester user community, tied together by the Patentcenter listserv.  (Interested persons should join that listserv.)  A committee from the listserv met last autumn with some USPTO developers and it was hoped that this might lead to some progress with fixing some of the bugs in Patentcenter.  It was also hoped that USPTO would listen to users and implement some of the enhancements and features requested by users.  

About four months ago, it was explored that the committee might meet again with USPTO people to review the bug list and to see what progress USPTO had been made with the bug list.  Some time has passed and the meeting had not yet happened.  So to save time, I have prepared this report that summarizes my best assessment of USPTO’s progress with the bug list.  Maybe some time soon the meeting will be able to take place and there will be an opportunity for further dialog.  In the mean time, this blog article reviews USPTO’s progress in this area.  (Preview:  things look grim.) 

In a subsequent blog article I will review USPTO’s progress with the list of requested feature enhancements for Patentcenter.  (Preview:  things look grim in that area as well.)

Continue reading “How things are going with bug fixes in USPTO’s Patentcenter”

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Patentcenter fails to tell you what application you are filing in

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One category of recurring task in any e-filing system is what might be termed a “follow-on submission” or a “subsequently filed document”.  With such a task, you somehow indicate the application number of the application in which you wish to file your document.  Clearly one of the most important user interface goals is to help the user avoid an undesired result of inadvertently filing a document in the wrong application.   EFS-Web gets this right.  WIPO’s ePCT system gets this right.  But Patentcenter fails, as may be seen from the screen shot at right.  Continue reading “Patentcenter fails to tell you what application you are filing in”