[Patentcenter] By the way, if you want to write your own letter to Inspector General --

Mon Nov 13 20:29:06 UTC 2023

I just had a little time to think away from the computer...

ANALOGY.  If you had a really bad examiner, you wouldn't expect to write to
the Director to intervene in one patent application.  She delegates, and
it's up to the delegees in the chain, down to the examiner, to follow the
relevant instructions.   On the other hand, if there's something systemic,
some repeated endemic problem, THAT we'd write to the Director to get THAT
changed, right?

I think it's same here.  Director Vidal and IG Gustafson won't be able to
do much about individual bugs in Patent Center.  That's up to the PTO's IT
staff (and as Carl found with his meeting with Udupa, individual bugs get
swatted away like flies).  I think you have to make the case of systemic
failure.  Obviously systemic patterns are made up of individual instances,
so you have to do that too, but the core of the issue -- and what makes
this hard -- is that to get the Director's or IG's attention, you have to
show a pattern.

So if you write about a single bug, I think you have to add some additional
discussion to make it a systemic issue, not a point issue.  One way to do
that is to tie your individual bug as a symptom of one of the patterns in
one of the letters in the list from an hour ago.

At Inspector General, the jurisdictional remit is "waste, fraud, abuse, and
gross mismanagement."  https://www.oig.doc.gov/Pages/default.aspx  So use
those magic words liberally.

Thank you

On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 2:03 PM David Boundy <DavidBoundyEsq at gmail.com>
wrote:

> You file it at https://www.govcomhotline.com/DOC1
>
> For these letters, quality is more important than quantity.   Some degree
> of genuine analysis, fact, citation, etc is important  (if your letter is
> too flimsy, IG will just ignore it).  This is something only for the
> internally-self-motivated -- all you will get directly is an email "Thank
> you so much, we have forwarded your concerns to the agency, and your
> complaint number is 23-4567."  You will get no direct instant gratification
> from the IG.  But at some point, the agency will have to write a response,
> and the IG will read that carefully, and the IG report will flag your
> concern and you will get some kind of an answer.
>
> I know the PTO already has five complaints.   If they get more, it will
> make it really hard for them to decommission EFS-Web before Patent Center
> is really good and ready.
>
> I name the "violating party" as "Patent and Trademark Office, IT Office."
> You don't have to fill in every blank.
>
> The important thing is credibility and sound analysis -- make a genuine
> effort to demonstrate that you're trying to be helpful with facts.  When
> I'm writing, I take on the mindset that I am just neutrally pointing out a
> problem that *of course* the agency wouldn't tolerate of itself, *if they
> only knew*.  I'm just being a good citizen reporting a broken wire or
> something that poor busy overworked senior officials must have overlooked,
> and they would have fixed *if they only knew*.  Give a specific
> anecdote.  If you ask to maintain anonymity, the IG will keep you anonymous
> vis-a-vis the PTO.   I think you can give serial numbers and similar
> confidential-but-not-privileged information, especially stuff that will
> eventually be public anyway -- so far as I know, letters are not
> published.  They will be forwarded to the PTO, but not published.
>
> If you want, you can include the sentence "This complaint provides
> additional information to supplement complaints  23-0900, 24-0055, 24-0119,
> and 24-0124" that's probably all to the good -- let them know that it's not
> just two cranks named Oppedahl and Boundy.
>
> Examples from me and from Carl:
>
> Letter of Intellectual Property Professionals to OMB/OIRA and to Commerce
> Inspector General re introduction of a new bug in Patent Center (Nov. 4,
> 2023) <https://ssrn.com/abstract=4623999>
>
> Letter of 82 Intellectual Property Professionals to OIRA and Commerce IG
> relating to non-readiness of Patent Center, requesting delay of retirement
> of EFS-Web and Private PAIR (Nov. 1, 2023)
> <https://ssrn.com/abstract=4620375>
>
> Letter of PTAAARMIGAN to Peg Gustafson, Inspector General for the
> Department of Commerce, re waste, fraud, abuse, and gross mismanagement in
> Patent Center (Oct. 16, 2023) <https://ssrn.com/abstract=4604104>
>
> Letter of One Hundred Seventy-Eight Members of the Patent Center Listserv
> to Kathi Vidal and Peg Gustafson (Sept. 29, 2023)
> <https://blog.oppedahl.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/20230929-letter.pdf>
>
>
> --
>
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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*David Boundy *| Partner | Potomac Law Group, PLLC

P.O. Box 590638, Newton, MA  02459

Tel (646) 472-9737 | Fax: (202) 318-7707

*dboundy at potomaclaw.com <dboundy at potomaclaw.com>* | *www.potomaclaw.com
<http://www.potomaclaw.com>*

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