[E-trademarks] Paperwork Clearance for surveys

[Carl Oppedahl]

A big smile here for me, mixed with a wry grimace.

First I guess the big-smile part.  Yes, for those just joining us on 
this listserv thread, what happened was:

  * I posted a gripe shortly before September 22 on the e-Trademarks
    listserv to point out that it was very clear that a particular
    customer-facing USPTO system (Trademark Center) had not been
    beta-tested competently, given the recent identification of a
    certain conspicuous flaw in the system that would surely have been
    eliminated long ago had competent beta testing been undertaken.
  * A USPTO person connected with TC wrote to me privately explaining
    that part of why the beta testing had been so poor was that the PRA
    effectively caps the number of reviewers at "nine" by making it very
    burdensome for an agency to use "ten" or a higher number as the
    number of reviewers.
  * I posted about this PRA "nine/ten" problem in the listserv on
    September 22.
  * David (who does not do PRA for a living; he spends his time serving
    clients as a patent practitioner) then replied on September 22 on
    that listserv that the PRA has a lightweight way to get a clearance
    for surveys and the like.
  * We now see that on September 15, the USPTO posted a Federal Register
    notice to make use of this lightweight way to get a clearance for
    surveys and the like.

When I first saw what David posted (quoted below), I wondered whether 
there might be some cause-and-effect going on.  I wondered whether one 
of the USPTO lurkers on the e-Trademarks listserv who saw David's 
listserv reply about the lightweight way to get PRA clearance might have 
passed this information along to somebody else at the USPTO, leading to 
the USPTO making use of the lightweight way.

No, sorry, the time line doesn't work for that.  The USPTO activity to 
make use of the lightweight way to get PRA clearance had already taken 
place some time before September 15.

So now we turn to the wry grimace part.  What we now have in front of us 
us that yes, somebody at the USPTO who does PRA for a living did already 
know about the lightweight way to get PRA clearance, and did actually 
make use of it on USPTO's behalf to help with some USPTO survey or 
review or beta-test activity. Making it /*extra sad */that the USPTO 
people who could have done competent beta testing of Trademark Center 
capped their beta-tester count at "nine" out of a lack of awareness of 
this lightweight way to get PRA clearance that /*somebody else*/ at the 
USPTO was already familiar with.

The natural next question is, /*what is*/ the USPTO survey or review or 
beta-test activity for which this Federal Register notice was 
published?  Well, of course the FR notice doesn't say.  But according to 
the FR notice, you can drop an email to a particular USPTO person named 
in the FR notice and that person will spill the beans on it.  So thanks 
to David, I have just now dropped the email to that USPTO person.  I 
imagine that later today I will hear from this USPTO person with the 
answer. (My prediction is that it will turn out to be the surveys that 
pop up when you finish a Patent Center task and it asks you (among other 
things) how badly PC failed you in your most recent PC task.)

Meanwhile, returning to the wry grimace part, we are reminded of the 
profound missed opportunities that happen again and again when the USPTO 
goes out of its way to avoid engaging in any meaningful way with the 
practitioner community on things like beta testing of customer-facing 
USPTO systems.  Way back when the USPTO was developing what is now 
Trademark Center, what could have happened (but did not) was genuine 
engagement between the USPTO developers of TC and the practitioner 
community (here, the thousand-practitioner membership of the 
e-Trademarks listserv). Back then, had such genuine engagement occurred, 
a USPTO developer could have mentioned that (supposedly) the beta-test 
group size was limited (by the PRA) to "nine".  We could have responded 
"oh, but you know there is lightweight way to get PRA clearance". Maybe 
after that, the USPTO developers could have done competent beta testing 
of TC.  And now in 2025, maybe TC could have been a system that all 
could be proud of.

On 10/2/2025 4:29 PM, David Boundy via Patentcenter wrote:
> About a week ago, Carl noted that the PTO was doing a crappy job of 
> beta testing because some moron in the Office of General Counsel 
> misunderstood the Paperwork Reduction Act and thought the number of 
> reviewers was capped at nine.   I replied that the PRA has a 
> lightweight way to get a clearance for surveys and the like.
>
> Well, the PTO filed the application necessary to fix this. 
> https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/09/15/2025-17765/agency-information-collection-activities-submission-to-the-office-of-management-and-budget-for
>
>
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