The USPTO has announced it plans to shut down EFS-Web (and Private PAIR) on November 8. This is because, supposedly, Patent Center provides “100%” of the functions of EFS-Web and Private PAIR. (This is a pants-on-fire lie, as the 187 signers explain to Director Vidal.) So anyway, the real situation is that the USPTO actually admits that it must not shut down EFS-Web, as will now be described.
See for example this discussion on the USPTO’s Patent Center information page:
RESOLVED: eTerminal disclaimer character limit
Currently the signature field is only allowing users to input a signature up to 15 characters.
If your signature contains more than 15 characters please use efs to file your eterminal disclaimer.
Yes, the reported bug is that the e-terminal-disclaimer system in Patent Center is defective. The e-terminal-disclaimer system in EFS-Web works correctly, but the Patent Center developers failed to bring that function forward correctly into Patent Center. It pukes on the submission if the user’s e-signature happens to be more than fifteen characters. This is trouble ticket CP112 which was reported to the USPTO on March 20, 2023. (This is one of the half-dozen bugs that got created in Patent Center during its software update of March 17, 2023 that was supposed to fix other bugs.)
So the USPTO’s supposed “resolution” of this bug in Patentcenter is not for the USPTO to actually fix the bug. The “resolution” is:
use EFS-Web to file your eterminal disclaimer.
Then we turn to yet another bug in Patent Center. EFS-Web has a function for filing Supplemental Examination. But the Patent Center developers failed to bring this function forward into Patent Center. As may be seen in the screen shot at right, the developers recognized this bug. The workaround is simple:
Please use EFS-Web to file Supplemental Examinations.
Then we turn to another Patent Center bug, shown in the screen shot at right. The “resolution” is:
Please use EFS-Web to file eTerminal disclaimers.
In other words, the USPTO must not shut down EFS-Web on November 8 as scheduled.