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.  

When a filer is identifying a non-inventor applicant, it is not enough merely to name the non-inventor applicant.  The filer must also state the excuse for this.  The filer might state for example that the inventor or inventors are “obligated to assign” the invention to the would-be non-inventor applicant.  Or the filer might state that the non-inventor applicant is the assignee.  In rare fact patterns one might state that the would-be non-inventor applicant is a “person who shows sufficient proprietary interest”.  

But what is all too easy is for the filer to forget to check any of these boxes.  If the filer forgets to check at least one of these boxes, then the ADS will fail at its purpose, so far as the establishment of a non-inventor applicant is concerned.  What will then follow, as described here, is a miserable cascade of unhappy consequences, and it will take weeks if not months to fix the problems.  

This is the sort of thing that computers are supposed to be good at.  When the filer uploads a computer-readable Form PTO/AIA/14 to Patentcenter, what should happen next is:

• Patentcenter should look to see whether the filer is trying to establish a non-inventor applicant, and, if the answer is “yes”, then
• Patentcenter should look to see whether the filer failed to check at least one of the “excuse” boxes, and if the answer is “yes”, then
• Patentcenter should display a warning.

This is Feature Request FR23.