<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>There is a banner item that just today got posted to Patent
Center's main screen:<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Patent Center eOffice Action will be delayed May 22, 2024 due
to USPTO system maintenance. e-Notifications will begin
approximately at 10am E.T.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I sort of can't figure out why this got singled out as a failing
of Patent Center that needed to get acknowledged. We have all
seen oddities where the Patent Center system is late (by a day or
two sometimes) in letting the practitioner know that outgoing
correspondence got stuck into the IFW file. And we have all seen
oddities where the Patent Center system tells us about something
very important that happened in our patent file that the USPTO
wants us to know about, and we don't get told until days later, or
we get told twice, and the second time we get told is days or
weeks after the fact. And Suzannah noted that apparently the
"welcome letter" has risen to such a level of importance that it
gets communicated to the practitioner a second time, some weeks
after the first time it got communicated.</p>
<p>But now today all of a sudden the Patent Center developers feel
that this particular delay (of a mere few hours) deserves to be
singled out for a special banner item?</p>
<p>And by the way, what is "eOffice Action" exactly, if it is not
the exact same thing as OCN (outgoing correspondence
notification)? <br>
</p>
<p>There are outgoing correspondence notifications that are for
things other than Office Actions. For example you might be on the
receiving end of a Notice to File Missing Parts, or one of those
letters where they tell you that some NTFMP has been withdrawn.
Or a Filing Receipt. Those OCNs are not (I guess) the same thing
as an "eOffice Action". But does this banner item mean that there
will be a several-hour delay for some OCNs but not others? You
will get notified today the 22nd right away (as usual) about
outgoing correspondence that is not an Office Action, but if the
outgoing correspondence is an Office Action, your notification
will arrive several hours late?<br>
</p>
<p>In our office, these days we have gotten to the point where our
distrust of the OCNs runs so high that we feel we have no choice
but to log in at Patent Center manually and click around to look
for outgoing correspondence and status changes ourselves. Because
we just cannot trust that we would ever hear about an item of
outgoing correspondence in a timely way by means of an outgoing
correspondence notification. <br>
</p>
<p>In the old days of PAIR, it seemed to be good enough to do this
manual OC check once, a minute or two past midnight in Virginia,
and if there was any OC, we would see it.</p>
<p>With Patent Center, it seems to be erratic. Some OCs will be
visible a minute or two past midnight, yes. But then if we log
back in at Patent Center several hours past midnight, another dump
of OCs seems to have taken place. And then when banker's hours
arrive in Virginia, a third dump of OCs into IFW will sometimes
happen, I guess because USPTO developers arrive at their desk at 9
or 10AM and sort of notice that a dumpload of OCs somehow never
got posted into IFW so it happens during banker's hours.</p>
<p>Anyway I thought it was sort of quaint or cute that this
particular delay got singled out for disclosure in a banner item
in Patent Center.</p>
<p>But I welcome any comment from a fellow user of Patent Center if
they can shed light on this question of what is "eOffice Action"
exactly, if it is not the exact same thing as an OCN (outgoing
correspondence notification)? <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p></p>
</body>
</html>