[E-trademarks] Paperwork Clearance for surveys

Fri Oct 3 14:36:40 UTC 2025

Sorry to be drip-drip-dripping this.  The more I look, the more I see
that's just fabulously incompetent -- or else fabulously underhanded to
evade the law.

Turns out the PTO has understood the lightweight clearance path for YEARS
-- since at least 2022.
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAOMBHistory?ombControlNumber=0651-0088
The capping of beta tests at nine is not benign lack of understanding, it's
intentional.  The PRA is just a smoke screen for lazy-ass people who don't
WANT a useful beta test.

Bastards.

On Fri, Oct 3, 2025 at 9:56 AM Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com> wrote:

> 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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