[Patentcenter] Patent Center does not show documents in the order they were uploaded

[Richard Schafer]

This is just a guess since no one outside of the PTO and its contractors knows how Patent Center works.

EFS may have sequentially processed each document, leading to them showing in the IFW in their uploaded order. Occasionally, some documents may have required special handling, which required pulling them out of order.

Patent Center may be multi-threaded, with each document being processed asynchronously. That may lead to random ordering in the IFW.

Asynchronous processing of each document makes sense from a developer's perspective because it may use computational resources more efficiently. But from the applicant's perspective, the result is a mess for anyone trying to compare what is in the IFW with what was uploaded.

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>

From: Patentcenter <patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Randall Svihla via Patentcenter
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 4:25 PM
To: users of Patentcenter <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Randall Svihla <rsvihla at nsiplaw.com>
Subject: [Patentcenter] Patent Center does not show documents in the order they were uploaded

Hi, fellow Patent Center victims

When we file a new application, we upload documents in a standard order.  For example, we uploaded the following documents in the following order for a new application we filed today:

ADS
Utility Transmittal
Application (single PDF document including specification, claims, abstract)
Drawings
Declaration
POA
IDS Statement
IDS Form
Foreign Ref 1
Foreign Ref 2
Foreign Ref 3
Foreign Ref 4

When we filed new applications in the sainted EFS-Web of blessed memory, they would generally appear in the image file wrapper in the same order we upload them, although occasionally the POA and IDS Statement would be out of order.  This made it easy to do a quick visual check that all of the documents were in the image file wrapper.

However, for the new application we just filed in the hated p.o.s. Patent Center, the documents appear in the following random order in the image file wrapper:

ADS
Foreign Reference 1
Foreign Reference 4
IDS Form
Declaration
Drawings
POA
Foreign Reference 3
Utility Transmittal
Electronic Acknowledgement Receipt
Foreign Reference 2
Electronic Payment Receipt
Specification
Claims
Abstract
IDS Statement

WHY????????????????????

Best regards,

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


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