[Patentcenter] More Patent Center unannounced degradation

[Randall Svihla]

What's funny(?) about this is that the Patent Center information page at this link:

https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center

contains the following statement:

Patent Center
Patent Center has 100% of the functionality of EFS-Web, Public and Private PAIR, and is available to all users for electronic filing and management of patent applications.

Yet when you scroll down, you see the following statement:

Additional feedback currently in development
We are working diligently to complete implementation of EFS-Web and PAIR functionality in Patent Center.

So which is it?  100% functionality or not?

Best regards,

Randall S. Svihla
NSIP Law
Washington, D.C.


From: Patentcenter <patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Carl Oppedahl via Patentcenter
Sent: Tuesday, November 7, 2023 6:26 PM
To: patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: Re: [Patentcenter] More Patent Center unannounced degradation


Richard, you must be mistaken.  Patent Center has 100% of the functionality of PAIR.
On 11/7/2023 4:11 PM, Richard Schafer via Patentcenter wrote:
Coincidentally, I received a notice from Claimmaster Software today warning me, “Unfortunately, a fairly recent update of Patent Center appears to have been intentionally designed to prevent automated web scraping.”  Once Private PAIR shuts down they will be unable to fully automate downloading of bibliographic data and IFW documents as they could from Private PAIR and until recently, from Patent Center. The best they can do is teach me a semi-manual import tool to obtain the data for creating Office Action response shells and filling out PTO forms.

That’s yet another last-minute degradation of Patent Center. There’s no mention of this change on the Patent Center information page. Nor can I find any rule or even guidance against web scraping.

Best regards,
Richard A. Schafer | Schafer IP Law
P.O. Box 230081 | Houston, TX 77223
M: 832.283.6564 | richard at schafer-ip.com<mailto:richard at schafer-ip.com>


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