There are many things that Palm reveals to people inside of the USPTO, that PAIR and Patentcenter do not reveal to applicants. Here are some of those things that Patentcenter should reveal to applicants. Continue reading “Patentcenter should reveal application status”
Validations in Patentcenter
Broadly speaking, Patentcenter does extremely poorly on validations. The designers of Patentcenter would merely need to have looked at ePCT to see how to do validations correctly. Here are examples of validations and how to do them right and how to fail to do them, and how to do them wrong. Continue reading “Validations in Patentcenter”
Get rid of or correct or improve the “boy who cried wolf” nag message about paying fees
Get rid of or correct or improve the “boy who cried wolf” nag message in Patentcenter about paying fees.
This is Feature Request FR25. Continue reading “Get rid of or correct or improve the “boy who cried wolf” nag message about paying fees”
Patentcenter should check uploaded ADS for a signature
When an ADS turns out to be unsigned, or not correctly signed, or not signed by a practitioner, it leads to a cascade of problems. It often takes months or a lot of money, or both, to fix the problems. It would be trivially easy for Patentcenter to check an uploaded computer-readable Form PTO/AIA/14 (Application Data Sheet) such as we see at right, for a signature. But Patentcenter does not do so.
Patentcenter should check an uploaded ADS for a signature and should display warnings as needed. This is Feature Request FR24. Continue reading “Patentcenter should check uploaded ADS for a signature”
Patentcenter should validate the “non-inventor applicant” excuse field
When a filer uploads Form PTO/AIA/14 (Application Data Sheet), Patentcenter should carry out validations. As mentioned here, Patentcenter should validate priority claims against DAS. This blog article points out that Patentcenter should validate the “non-inventor applicant” excuse field.
This is Feature Request FR23.
Continue reading “Patentcenter should validate the “non-inventor applicant” excuse field”
Consequences of an unsigned (or incorrectly signed) ADS
What are the consequences of filing a US patent application with an Application Data Sheet (“ADS”) that was unsigned, or incorrectly signed? Many, many bad things can flow from this. The bad things can cascade and it can take months of tedious step-by-step filings to get things straightened out. Continue reading “Consequences of an unsigned (or incorrectly signed) ADS”
EUIPO will join DAS on July 11, 2020
I am delighted to report that the European Union Intellectual Property Office will begin participating in the DAS system as a Depositing Office for industrial designs starting on July 11, 2020. This comes after Eighty-four practitioners and applicants asked EUIPO to join DAS.
For more information see the Notice at the WIPO DAS web site.
By the way, if you are glad to see this result, maybe take a look at the list of the eighty-four signers, and if you know one or more of them, maybe drop them a “thank you”.
Patentcenter should validate priority claims against DAS
Getting a priority claim wrong in a patent application is a serious matter. There’s a super-simple thing that ePCT does to prevent many ways of getting priority claims wrong, that Patentcenter fails to do. Of course Patentcenter should do the same validation that ePCT does — cross-checking against DAS. I’ll explain. Continue reading “Patentcenter should validate priority claims against DAS”
Patentcenter’s “sort by patent number” does not work correctly
The coders who designed the Patentcenter workbench made a mistake in the “sort by patent number” function. This is listserv trouble ticket number CP33. Continue reading “Patentcenter’s “sort by patent number” does not work correctly”
How your reptile brain reacts to an animated image of a throbber
I bet I got your attention with that title! Nope, I think it is extremely unlikely that whatever the title made you think of has anything at all to do with the feature of USPTO’s Patentcenter that this article is going to talk about. Continue reading “How your reptile brain reacts to an animated image of a throbber”