The urgent question outstanding for those who file utility patent applications at the USPTO is, are they stuck with no choice but to pay the $400 penalty to preserve the safe and trusted legacy PDF filing path, or is there any chance that the “DOCX with auxiliary PDF” path might present an acceptable level of professional liability risk so that the client could avoid the $400 penalty? Maybe the USPTO will clarify this. Continue reading “Maybe USPTO will clarify the “DOCX safeguard””
Three days left to get in your numbers for the 2023 Toteboards
Three days from now will be the end of your opportunity to get your numbers in for the 2023 Toteboards (blog article).
So far we have the following results:
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- For the Trademark toteboard, we have 27 responses accounting for 6321 trademark registrations.
- For the US plant patent toteboard, we have 5 responses accounting for 137 US plant patents.
- For the US design patent toteboard, we have 20 responses accounting for 2111 US design patents.
- For the US utility patent toteboard, we have 22 responses accounting for 11531 US utility patents.
If you have not already gotten your numbers in, now is the time to do it (blog article).
No responsiveness from the Assignment Branch on defect in Assignment Center
(Update: there is still no responsiveness three days later, see blog article. Further update: the USPTO finally fixed this in May of 2024 but did not do me the courtesy of letting me know, see blog article.)
The Assignment Branch is failing to provide acceptable tech support for its new Assignment Center. Continue reading “No responsiveness from the Assignment Branch on defect in Assignment Center”
Unauthorized Practice of Law by the USPTO – sample assignments
Ownership of property is a matter of state law, not federal law. Indeed for countries that are not the US, ownership of property is a matter of the law of the country involved. In the face of this, the USPTO has no business giving out legal advice about language to use in a patent assignment or trademark assignment. Continue reading “Unauthorized Practice of Law by the USPTO – sample assignments”
Some of the defects in the new Assignment Center
Earlier today the USPTO released its new Assignment Center, after having shut down the familiar and reliable EPAS and ETAS systems. It is full of bugs and defects. Here are some of the bugs and defects. Continue reading “Some of the defects in the new Assignment Center”
Getting the benefits of DOCX filing while avoiding the risks
There is a way to get nearly all of the supposed benefits from the validations provided in USPTO’s DOCX filing paths, while avoiding the ponderous professional liability risks of those DOCX filing paths. Continue reading “Getting the benefits of DOCX filing while avoiding the risks”
A second unanswered letter from the USPTO – DOCX safeguard
(Update: it looks like maybe the USPTO might answer my letter about this. See blog article.)
The USPTO has not yet answered a letter from ten days ago, asking about the metes and bounds of the (apparently quite limited) safeguard provided by a protective PDF accompanying a DOCX patent application. Continue reading “A second unanswered letter from the USPTO – DOCX safeguard”
A first unanswered letter from the USPTO – Patent Center EBC tickets
On October 12, 2023 I sent an email to USPTO Commissioner Udupa containing a list of fifteen EBC trouble tickets that relate to bugs in Patent Center (see email), asking her to let us know the open-or-closed status of those EBC trouble tickets. We did not hear back. This was in preparation for our in-person meeting with Commissioner Udupa about Patent Center that was going to take place on October 18. On October 17, the day before the in-person meeting, Commissioner Udupa emailed us (see email) to report that she was “completing her full review” not only of those fifteen EBC trouble tickets but also a group of 350 EBC trouble tickets relating to Patent Center, that she hoped to discuss with us the following day in the in-person meeting. During the in-person meeting, she did not provide the results of her review.
So on November 17, 2023, USPTO Commissioner Udupa received this letter. It reminded her that we still hoped to hear back from her on the status of the first fifteen EBC trouble tickets, and on the status of the 350 EBC tickets that she told us about on October 17 2023.
More than two months have passed with no response from Commissioner Udupa. Here is my conclusion, as predicted here:
If we were to fail to hear back from Commissioner Udupa in response to this letter, I think it would be reasonable to conclude that she is tacitly admitting that she was wrong when she said the EBC gets back to people about EBC tickets about Patent Center. If we were to fail to hear back from Commissioner Udupa in response to this letter, I think it would be reasonable to conclude that she is tacitly admitting that we were correct when we told her that the EBC has never, not even once, gotten back to people about EBC tickets about Patent Center.
Training and system design fails at the USPTO
It is as if the USPTO actively wishes to punish applicants for making the choice to use DAS instead of shipping a physical certified copy of a priority document. What I will now describe is a training fail for the USPTO’s Office of Patent Application Processing, along with a system design fail by the USPTO’s software developers. Continue reading “Training and system design fails at the USPTO”
Now available: training slides for son-of-EPAS/ETAS
The USPTO is apparently still planning to shut down EPAS and ETAS at 12:01 AM on Monday, February 5, 2024, and is still planning to release the successor system, called “Assignment Center” (“AC”), at that time.
The USPTO has released training slides for the patent side of AC and training slides for the trademark side of AC. The USPTO has also posted training videos.