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”
An encouraging step with Patentcenter
Readers will recall my recent sense of discouragement with USPTO’s handling of its Patentcenter rollout. But yesterday there was an encouraging event. I think there is some reason for guarded optimism that USPTO may do better going forward in its handling of its Patentcenter rollout. Continue reading “An encouraging step with Patentcenter”
Today is the day for Israel and DAS and industrial designs
Today is the exciting day! Today is the day that ILPO commences its participation as a Depositing Office and as an Accessing Office for industrial designs in the DAS system. Continue reading “Today is the day for Israel and DAS and industrial designs”
A defect in Patentcenter — Examiner lookups don’t work like they do in PAIR
(Update in December of 2023: the developers have made changes to the Examiner lookup in Patent Center that fix some, but not all, of the defects that we reported to the USPTO in 2020. See parenthetical updates below.)
One of the core design principles for Patentcenter, USPTO has said from the beginning, is that each feature of PAIR and each feature of EFS-Web will be replicated in Patentcenter. The idea is that once the USPTO manages to replicate each and every feature of PAIR and EFS-Web into Patentcenter, and manages to get all of the programming mistakes fixed, and manages to get it to scale well under load, then USPTO will shut down PAIR and EFS-Web. This blog article describes yet another defect, this time the Examiner lookup feature for an application in your workbench. Continue reading “A defect in Patentcenter — Examiner lookups don’t work like they do in PAIR”
Gluten-free seltzer water
The other day I was working on setting up an equipment rack in a new location. I had ordered a piece of equipment and it had arrived. You can see it at right. It made me think of a bottle of “gluten-free” seltzer water that I had encountered recently in a grocery store. Continue reading “Gluten-free seltzer water”
Poorly designed “outgoing correspondence” default setting in Patentcenter
(This is Patentcenter trouble ticket CP31.)
The designers of Patentcenter got it seriously wrong when they picked the default setting for the display of “Outgoing Correspondence”. The result for practitioners who until now have been accustomed to the default setting in EFS-Web is that the “Outgoing Correspondence” feature of Patentcenter is a trap for the unwary. Continue reading “Poorly designed “outgoing correspondence” default setting in Patentcenter”