Readers will recall my article about Super Patents. If you want to try to get a Super Patent, you have to file a PCT application in one of the participating Receiving Offices and you have to select one of the participating International Searching Authorities (ISAs) and you have to file a form requesting acceptance into the Collaborative Search & Examination (CS&A) pilot program. And you have to get incredibly lucky to get one of the very small number of slots open for applicants in this pilot program.
Which raises the very interesting question — if you do all of these things, how do you find out if you got accepted into the pilot program? How do you find out whether your PCT application will receive an International Search Report and Written Opinion that resulted from the collaborative effort of five International Searching Authorities?
Just now I was delighted to learn that one of our firm’s clients got one of the small number of coveted slots in CS&E. But how did we learn this good news? How, as a general matter, does one learn that one has been accepted into this pilot program? Maybe you already knew the answer, but I did not. I was astonished at the answer. Continue reading “How you learn that your case has been accepted into Collaborative Search & Examination?”
As US patent practitioners know very well, the chief database used by USPTO personnel to carry out most patent prosecution (including design patent prosecution) is called IFW (image file wrapper). Some nameless person at the USPTO made a decision back when IFW was being designed a decade ago, to make this a database in which no color or grayscale drawing would be displayed clearly. Instead any color or grayscale drawing will get blurred, often to the point of unrecognizability.