Would be great if PAIR and/or EFS would help easily calculate if excess claims fees are due by displaying the current claim count for total claims and independent claims.
Update the description relating to patent expiration to include an "or" statement that a patent may have reached the end of the term. Example: Continuing application has an effective filing date of February 1, 1993 Patent issues on January 5, 2003 20 year term ends February 1, 2013 (providing there is no TD to shorten, or PTA to extend term) 11.5 year fee would be due July 5, 2014 The Patents Maintenance Fees Storefront ...more »
POA rules and procedure could use an update so that practitioners can effectively remove their names and contact information from the record when no longer performing work for a patent owner. Currently, POA is required to change the Fee Address, and Correspondence Address for pre-AIA patents. These changes often occur after issuance. Furthermore, should a firm take over an issued patent and need to become the Fee Address ...more »
When a 312 Amendment is submitted, could a workflow or message be sent to the Examiner to let them know. We often hear that 312 Amendments are not on the Examiner's docket yet, therefore, he can't act on them. Since we are running up against the Issue Fee due date, it would be great if we could get it on the Examiner's docket as soon as possible.
Currently, there is no way to pay an issue fee via the new payment system in an amount less than the current full amount (i.e., $1000). In some instances, an issue fee may be paid under an older fee schedule (i.e., $960), but withdrawn from issue for some reason (e.g., to IDS a foreign office action/references). Once the application is allowed again, only the difference (i.e., $40) should be due, but the payment system ...more »
Since practitioners cannot be sponsored by other practitioners we need a mechanism to allow practitioners to review saved submissions prepared under another practitioner. For example, a practitioner newly registered to practice or with with a limited registration may not be allowed to sign documents being filed with the Office. This of course is a firm preference and not a requirement of the Office. Still, this presents ...more »
When new customer numbers are requested and associated with practitioners, the Office should be able to update registered USPTO.gov accounts to include CNs the practitioner is associated with. I seem to recall this was a plan some years ago, however, it is not something that has been happening with any regularity. It is unreasonable to ask practitioners to send in a form to request their accounts be updated to include ...more »
On more than one occasion a patent application never moves from Undergoing Preexam Processing. I believe this has happened to both US Non-Provisional applications and US National Stage patent applications. The attorney or a staff member is forced to call the Application Assistance Unit to request for someone to investigate. This should never happen in an automated workflow system. Consider setting a default number of ...more »
The form (https://www.uspto.gov/patent/uspto-automated-interview-request-air-form) includes a mandatory phone number field formatted to accept 10 numeric digits. I am located overseas and do not find that this format accommodates a phone number in a foreign country. For one thing, there is no way to indicate that the first two or three digits are the country code. I believe this is usually indicated by preceding the ...more »
Often, sometimes seemingly random, EFS or PAIR automatically logs the user out. It would be helpful to allow a user to set an inactivity period for automatic logout. When filing multiple papers in a single day, the time between submissions is often greater than the automatic time out period. This requires multiple logins and two-factor authentications (as selecting the checkbox for a trusted computer does nothing). ...more »
The current Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) form does not accept older five or six digit patent numbers. For example, 123456 or 12345. The older forms accepted this numbers with leading zeros. For example, 0123456. Please restore this functionality to the IDS forms.
When making priority claims using WebADS, the order the priority claims are input seems to be unrelated to the order in which they populate the resultant WebADS aia0014 form. That is, if five priority claims are listed in order 12345, they might come out as 31452. This has already presented problems in at least one case, where the (long and complex) priority chain in the as-filed ADS came out totally jumbled, causing ...more »