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<p>Yes this banner has actually been there for some days. And given
that the single sentence appears all by itself, providing no
context, it is gibberish. It steals a few seconds of attention
from every user of Patent Center by teasing you with the notion
that it surely must be telling you something you needed to know --
and then provides no useful information at all. It is actually a
value subtractor.</p>
<p>Having said this, I will provide the context that sort of
explains why the banner is there at all. It turns out that the
developers of Patent Center go out of their way to finger-point
whenever they have the ability to blame some other part of the
USPTO for defects or weaknesses in Patent Center. The context
here is that something like a year ago, on the trademark side of
the USPTO, it became possible to use ID.me as a way of satisfying
the Trademark Office that you are who you say you are (that you
are not, for example, a person from a certain foreign country
masquerading as a US attorney). And I guess the ID.me digital
proofing process is maybe less of a complete pain in the neck than
whatever digital proofing process was previously being used. <br>
</p>
<p>Meanwhile on the patent side of the USPTO, the only digital
proofing process available even now in 2025 is whatever that older
process was, the one that was more of a pain in the neck when
compared with ID.me.</p>
<p>And what must apparently be happening from time to time now in
2025 is that some would-be USPTO customer of Patent Center
(paralegals, I guess) bangs up against the requirement that he or
she prove his or her identity to be able to carry out some
patent-related task. And the would-be customer gripes (perfectly
reasonably) that the proofing process is a complete pain in the
neck. And the would-be customer calls up the EBC and opens a
trouble ticket which, reduced to its essence, says "how come if I
were a trademark customer I would get to use the less annoying
ID.me, but because I am using Patent Center, I am forced to use
the older and more annoying system?"</p>
<p>And the developers of Patent Center want to make sure everybody
knows it's not their fault. They blame "Patents", whoever that
is.</p>
<p>Anyway this is only the most recent in a number of
finger-pointings.<br>
</p>
<p>Remember how it used to be that in Patent Center you used to be
able to see a First Office Action Prediction? (Recall that the
developers of Patent Center had long ago promised that of course
every feature of EFS-Web and every feature of PAIR would be
brought forward into Patent Center -- and FOAP was a feature of
PAIR.) And then rather abuptly, the Patent Center developers
disabled that feature in Patent Center. The developers said the
feature was being "temporarily" turned off, and the developers
went out of their way to finger-point, saying that the reason for
the turning-off of the feature was that some other department of
the USPTO was actually responsible for doing the predicting, and
that other department was supposedly arriving at inaccurate
predictions. So it's not the fault of the Patent Center
developers that the FOAP feature was getting yanked.
Finger-pointing.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/13/2025 7:37 AM, Jeffrey Semprebon
via Patentcenter wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAO06BycUsQ8HGWKp8J27-VaGzofBrWX9yOqsdVNf=px2tJqv4A@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">This morning, upon logging into MyUSPTO, I'm
greeted with the headline banner <br>
<div>
<blockquote> <span>Patents has not implemented the digital
proofing process with ID.me at USPTO.</span></blockquote>
<div>Presumably, this conveys useful information to someone,
but I find it utter gibberish. Fortunately, moving on to
Patent Center, PC appears to be working normally.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
</blockquote>
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