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<font face="Times New Roman">Hmm. The the PTO will rely upon
attorney records if theirs filings in case the PTO loses or
corrupts records. And you want to rely upon the PTO and not keep
records?<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/22/2024 2:25 PM, Neil R. Ormos via
Patentpractice wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:alpine.DEB.2.20.2405221104570.21593@nybun.bezbf.bet">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">David Boundy wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">[...] If I have electronic (or the patent office
has electronic file wrapper) is there any reason
to keep paper? Obviously if there's
correspondence between me and the client that
isn't in the file wrapper and it could
conceivably be helpful to my client, that paper
I have to keep. But that leaves an awful lot of
paper for which, it seems to me, I can rely on
the PTO's electronic files, and throw it out.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
I read this as presenting several questions.
============
1. Can the PTO be relied on to maintain electronic file
wrappers and make them available?
2. Can one's own electronic file wrappers be relied on, and
are they any worse than paper?
That question can be decomposed a bit:
a. How much do you trust your own (or your firm's)
process of acquiring and organizing the content?
a.1 Do you have a mechanism to discover and correct latent
defects, such as broken files, misplaced and misnamed
documents, missing pages, document size errors (e.g.,
a legal paper scanned at letter size), conversion
errors (e.g., a color document saved as 1-bit),
ephemeral formats, and the like?
a.2 If you have such a mechanism, and there are manual
steps, who performs them?
b. How good are you (or your firm) at keeping electronic
files for, say, 30 years?
3. Who are you trying to satisfy? That is, by whom (e.g.,
client, ex-client, insurance carrier, OED or other
attorney/practitioner regulator, jury), and at what
standard of performance (e.g., engagement-letter
promises or disclaimers, rational basis, commercially
reasonable, Star Chamber strict liability) will you be
judged?
============
I don't have answers to the other questions, but as to the question about relying on the PTO, in view of the:
* EFS-Web/PAIR-to-Patent-Center transition;
* DOCX rule implementation;
* EPAS-to-Assignment-Center transition;
* new search systems on both the patent and trademark sides;
* several instances of data leakage; and
* the profound, general hostility of the agency to
practitioners and applicants;
I am skeptical that we-all can rely on the PTO's electronic files being complete and accurate in the coming years. "New Way Of Working" is all about cheaper and faster, and does not appear to encompass such end-customer-driven requirements as completeness and accuracy.
Moreover, I am also skeptical that the PTO will continue to make file wrappers conveniently available in a useful form--that is, with individual file wrappers downloadable in their entireties. I will be surprised if we do not see arbitrary restrictions on the download of file wrappers--say, a limit of 75 pages downloaded per 24 hours--justified by some pretextual allusion to security, system load, or user "evasion" of a fee-based data access or file wrapper delivery service (coming soon to a fee schedule or "storefront" near you).
</pre>
</blockquote>
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