Users of the new Certified Copy Center ("Center") must sign in at the Center's page rather than access through their MyUSPTO page. Although already signed in through MyUSPTO, users will need to sign in again when accessing the Center's page.
A link to the Center should be available under both the Patents and Trademarks drop-down menus.
Kudos for converting the system for ordering certified copies. There is a major flaw in the system when you require users to log in using their USPTO.gov account. The flaw is that the system requires one or more entitlement documents before a user can proceed. This is a flaw because practitioners associated with customer numbers have access to unpublished applications, and the staff the sponsor do as well. Why require ...more »
The WebADS form currently does NOT fill in the date field in the signature block, which is a huge problem: if an ADS is not properly signed, which signature includes the date, it is treated as a transmittal letter and not a proper ADS. Critically, this means that any priority claims are not (or may not be) considered. Applicants should NOT be penalized for using the PTO's own systems, especially when much of the appeal ...more »
Removing sponsored staff when they leave a firm is an urgent task and cannot always wait for practitioners to have time to complete the process. Alleviate this burden by including in the Sponsorship Tool a feature to allow for assigning different levels of security like in Financial Manager. A practitioner would designate one or more sponsored staff as administrators to manage sponsorship changes from the staff's own ...more »
In addition to the list of sponsored personnel is not in alphabetical order by default, users must scroll to see the available options for viewing more than 10 sponsored personnel per page. Options to show up to # are not visible when a user clicks on the "10 per page" link. Instead, users have to scroll to see the options for 10 items, 25 items, 50 items, and 100 items. In addition to automatically scrolling the page ...more »
Add a feature to the Sponsorship Tool to allow a user to export the list of staff that have been sponsored by the practitioner. When a large number of practitioners sponsor the same staff, having a list to confirm is greatly beneficial to ensuring that staff no longer associated with the practitioner no longer have access under that practitioner.
Currently when asked to set a new USPTO.gov password, users are stuck in limbo and have to close out the window indicating a successful password change. It would be most efficient to have the system continue with the login you requested rather than getting stuck.
This happens consistently with the sponsorship tool and occasionally with MyUSPTO.
Practitioners are often tasked with reviewing maintenance fee history. The data returned by the Office when looking up multiple records (max of 10 currently) is a great resource since it can be exported to Excel. Being able to upload data to make payments is helpful as well, however, it would be optimal to also be able to upload bulk data for the purpose of verifying past and future maintenance fee information. Helpful ...more »
Although it is generally accepted that if you are filing a response to a Notice to File Missing Parts or Notice to File Corrected Application Papers via EFS that you do not need to submit a return copy, the Notice actually contains conflicting instructions (see attached screenshot). The standard language of the Notices should be updated to definitively state that if you are filing a response via EFS that no return copy ...more »
This is related to "Recognize POA in Issued Patent to Allow for Withdrawal." A practitioner will periodically need to update the Fee Address where the practitioner does not have Power of Attorney (POA). If a practitioner has access to the record via the Correspondence Address, the Office should allow such practitioner to update the Fee Address. Please correct me if I am wrong ... It does not appear that POA is required ...more »
When logged into Private PAIR or EFS Web, you get an error message when expanding the main window that makes people think something isn't working. The message should not appear as there doesn't seem to be anything malfunctioning. Can someone address this please?
I had previously suggested that the system automatically save uploaded documents, if it logs someone out. An alternative that may be easier to implement would be to provide a "save this submission" option on the document upload page as well. That way we can save the upload in process. This would be especially useful for example after we upload all the documents and before we start the document verification (opening ...more »
The Trademark Docket allows search by Attorney but the Patent Docket requires a listing of each application number for monitoring.
It would be very useful to be able to add to your Patent Docket by Customer Number. It is also logical, since you are logged into My.USPTO.gov and thus it is easy to provide the Customer Numbers associated with your log-in.
While the US and other countries are moving toward transmission of these documents electronically, it would be nice to allow applicants to correct formalities in their priority claim that have been preventing the electronic retrieval of priority documents. Since there is a waiver in the rules for when the priority document must be supplied when it is available electronically, the Office should allow applicants to fix ...more »
When classifying a document that is uploaded, we have to select a Document Description. But document descriptions are not in any logical order. For example, for an Office Action response, there are six categories, three of which start with different words, and thus are in different parts of the pull-down menu. (Amendment, Preliminary, and Response) Since all of these are amendments, they should be categorized together. ...more »