eCommerce Modernization Search Ideas

The drop-down menus in MyUSPTO are very helpful. Please update the link on the Patents drop-down for the MPEP to pull up the searchable MPEP. The HTML version is not user friendly, especially to those who are newer to patent prosecution and need to search to find their answers. The Trademarks drop-down is already set to pull up the searchable TMEP.

The side menu bar, for me, takes up screen real estate that seems so unnecessary. I feel that having those shortcuts are important to have,I certainly use them all the time, but I think that maybe they can just be combined with the top menu (Home, Patents, Trademarks etc,) that is already there. Some of the shortcuts are already there anyway and it's a little redundant. I think it they could just add the few other... more »

On EFS receipts where payment is made by deposit account, the "Authorized User" field in the payment section of the receipt is blank. Looking back at old EFS receipts, this has evidently been the case since at least 2009, though we never noticed until now.

Although it states in "37 C.F.R. 1.363 Fee address for maintenance fee purposes" that the "Fee Address" Indication Form (SB/47) may be submitted as an attachment to the Part B Fee Transmittal at time of Issue Fee payment, a call to the PTO's electronic business center was met with the acknowledgement that the attachment of SB/47 may be overlooked if filed electronically and therefore, the tried and true method of fax... more »

Carl Oppedahl has done a much more thorough treatment of the topic at http://blog.oppedahl.com/?p=208; in short, though, a major fault in EFS should not be able to knock out EFS-Contingency as well.

I often file "Comments on the Notice of Allowance." At this time, it appears I cannot do that through the e-Issue fee payment, which only permits three categories of uploads:

Today I was logged out of EFS-Web with no warning for timing out after approximately 15 minutes. Nominally, it takes at least 30 minutes of no activity for a log-out. But I have received the log-out warning or been logged out for no activity WHILE I was uploading documents. The PTO's explanation notes: "Note that a logout will automatically occur when your session times out based on the defined user timeout value."... 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 »

It says somewhere that you can set how long you want to stay logged in to PAIR before the system boots you for inactivity, but this has never been true. Let this be customized, preferably with an option for 'never'?

If attorneys/agents must add the paralegals authorized to sign-in to their account, they should also be able to appoint a non-attorney/agent administrator or administrators, who can remove paralegals for them.

The MyUSPTO links available on every USPTO web page should include a drop-down menu to either:

Sign In

Create Account

What Is It? (link to home page)

Having to click on the MyUSPTO link and then click on Sign In seems excessive when you know what you want. Even in the event that a user clicks on Sign In when they do not yet have an account, the sign in dialog box gives them the option to create one.

It would be convenient for citation purposes if the paragraph numbers in the published application match those in the specification as-filed. My suggestion is that, so long as the numbering in the as-filed specification meets the USPTO publication guidelines, the original paragraph numbering should be retained in the published specification. The reason is that, while specification amendments are made to the as-filed... more »

Right now, a single customer number is associated with a particular client, and/or firm. Multiple practitioners are typically associated with each customer number. Yet only 1-3 practitioners (prosecuting practitioner and their supervisor(s)) are actually responsible for a particular case. It would be helpful to the practitioner if there was a way within PAIR to view their cases. Most practitioners buy expensive software,... more »

Allow users of Private PAIR to retrieve copies of non-patent literature references cited by the examiner. Users of Private PAIR have reported that they are unable to download copies of references that were cited by the Office. It seems an undue burden to require practitioners of record or the Applicant to obtain these documents, often at a cost when the Office is citing them against the applicant. I recall some copyright... more »

Discovered that requesting a certified copy through Private PAIR avoids the need for an entitlement document. Yay! It would be great to have that information included on the home page for the Certified Copy Center. For example, after explaining Proof of entitlement you could have two bullets. One for Private PAIR indicating that private access results in acceptance of entitlement; and two for all other requests where... more »