[Patentcenter] no FOAP (was Can't copy and past patent numbers and publication numbers from Application Data in Patent Center)

[Carl Oppedahl]

On 12/1/2023 2:37 PM, Suzannah K. Sundby via Patentcenter wrote:
> Also, I don’t see where PatentCrapper provides any info about the 
> expected due date for the first action… Anyone know if this is another 
> feature that PatentCrapper 100% doesn’t have?

See https://patentcenter-tickets.oppedahl.com/#CP16 and 
https://patentcenter-tickets.oppedahl.com/#CP173.

The USPTO's patent center info page offered a weird excuse about this 
failure in patent center.  Yes for almost a year the FOAP function was 
available in Patent Center. But a couple of months ago, the USPTO people 
saw that in both Patent Center and PAIR, quite often the FOAP function 
was completely wrong.   So they went to the trouble to cut off the FOAP 
function in Patent Center.  But they allowed the "quite often completely 
wrong" FOAP information to continue to appear in PAIR, the idea being 
that since PAIR already had a foot in the grave, it was not worth the 
trouble of taking this corrective step in PAIR.  So PAIR continued to 
display the "quite often completely wrong" FOAP information until its 
demise.

The pesky notion, however, of actually fixing the problem of the FOAP 
function being "quite often completely wrong" seems to have gotten 
pushed aside at the USPTO.  The answer turns out to be simple, the sort 
of thing that any competent computer programmer could fix in a few minutes.

Here's the thing that would take ten minutes for the USPTO programmers 
to do to fix the FOAP function.

For about ten years, the FOAP function worked the way it was supposed 
to.  Here is the legacy procedure (call it "Legacy Procedure").  You 
start with the application number and plug it into a database (call it 
"Son of Palm") that maps each application number to an Art Unit.  Having 
obtained the Art Unit number, you plug it into a second database (call 
it "AU Backlog") to work out the preset-day pendency for that Art Unit, 
in months (call it "Application Backlog").  Having obtained the 
Application Backlog, look up the "filing or 371 date" in Son of Palm.  
Subtract that from today's date to to find out how many months the 
application has already been in the queue to get examined (call this 
"credit for time served").  Subtract "credit for time served" from 
Application Backlog.  This tells you how many more months are going to 
pass before the application gets examined.  But we are not quite done 
yet, because the number might be negative or might be embarrassingly 
big.  If the number is negative, then we arbitrarily pick some 
non-negative number and we say that this is the answer.  (These days the 
observed behavior of the USPTO is that the made-up number is "3".)  The 
other possibility is that the number is embarrassingly big.  (Some years 
ago "embarrassingly big" meant "bigger than 108 months".  The USPTO 
changed it to sixty, and then to thirty.)  If the number is bigger than 
30, then the USPTO will lie and say that the number is 30.

That was legacy practice, and it was tied to the legacy practice that 
when the Application Branch decided that a case would get released to 
the Examining Corps, the Application Branch would assign the case to the 
Art Unit immediately.  This was done by looking to see how the 
government contractor had classified the case.  The patent 
class/subclass was used as a lookup into the database that maps patent 
class/subclass to art unit (call this the "Art Unit Mapping" database).

But the USPTO changed all of this in a way that only makes sense if we 
assume that USPTO management found that it could not trust the SPEs.  
Once a case had been assigned to an Art Unit, legacy practice (one 
guesses) was that SPEs could tamper with which Examiner gets which 
case.  So the goal was to deny the SPE the opportunity to tamper, and 
the solution that got settled upon was to fake the existence of a new 
Art Unit called "Central Docket". Since maybe two years ago, the mandate 
given to the Application Branch is to refrain from assigning the newly 
released case directly to the correct Art Unit, but instead to send it 
to the cesspool that is the Central Docket.  Only later, when "the right 
time comes", does Central Docket release the case to the correct Art Unit.

Oh there is one more twist to this.  If the case is a design case 
(meaning the series code is "29" or "35", then the thing settled upon 
was to fake the existence of a new Art Unit called "2900". Since maybe 
two years ago, the mandate given to the Application Branch is to refrain 
from assigning the newly released /*design*/ case directly to the 
correct Art Unit, but instead to send it to the cesspool that is Art 
Unit 2900.  Only later, when "the right time comes", does Art Unit 2900 
release the case to the correct Art Unit.

When does "the right time come" for a case to get released from the 
cesspool to the correct Art Unit?  Well, the answer is to arrive at a 
secret FOAP that never gets revealed to the applicant.  For each 
application that is in its cesspool (recall that this cesspool is 2900 
for design and Central Docket for non-design), maybe once a month 
somebody runs a batch job to plug each application number into the 
legacy process.  You start with the application number and plug it into 
the Son of Palm database to obtain the Art Unit where the case ought to 
have been assigned months earlier, but did not because now we are using 
cesspools. Having obtained the Art Unit number, you plug it into the AU 
Backlog database to get the Application Backlog.  Having obtained the 
Application Backlog, look up the "filing or 371 date" date for this 
application number in Son of Palm.  Subtract that from today's date to 
to find out how many months the application has already been in the 
cesspool to get the "credit for time served" number.  Subtract "credit 
for time served" from Application Backlog.  When this number drops below 
some threshold, the the case gets transferred from the cesspool to the 
Art Unit.  (The threshold is presumably customizable by Technology 
Center or by Art unit, based on the perceived trust level for the SPEs 
on the Tech Center or for the SPE in the particular Art Unit.)

Note of course that this procedure completely fails to address cases 
that is "special" or that is on "Track I" or that is entitled to 
"Accelerated Exam" or that is a design case that is on the "Rocket 
Docket".  Somehow the cases in these categories get pulled out of the 
cesspool early.  Or at least they usually do.  I have seen cases that 
are PPH-special that somehow languished in Central Docket for much 
longer than they should have.

And this procedure completely fails to address cases which the USPTO is 
obligated to take "out of turn" under 37 CFR § 1.496. These are the 
cases where the ISA/US or IPEA/US already found the claims being 
presented in the US national phase to be patentable. (The USPTO was 
already getting this wrong long before the USPTO created "Central Docket".)

But anyway, the USPTO already has (necessarily) worked out "when the 
right time has come" to release a case from either of the cesspools to 
the Art Unit.  And this is why a competent USPTO programmer could 
restore the FOAP tomorrow, or could have provided it months ago in 
Patent Center.

Here is how to do FOAP.  Are you following along, dear Patent Center 
developers?

For FOAP, look to see if the case is in a non-cesspool Art Unit. In 
other words, look to see if it is actually in the hands of the correct 
Art Unit.  If the answer is yes, then do the legacy lookup to arrive at 
the FOAP, and display the answer for the applicatant.

But the answer is likely "no".  Likely the application is in a cesspool 
Art Unit, namely Central Docket or 2900.

If it is in Central Docket, then carry out the existing "has the right 
time come?" lookup.   This tells you the secret FOAP that is already 
known to the USPTO, that indicates how close the USPTO management has 
gotten, in this particular case, to being ready to release the case to 
the correct Art Unit.    It will be recalled that this is done by 
finding out which Art Unit should have had the case all along (based 
upon classification) and looking to see the backlog in that Art Unit, 
and looking to see what the "credit for time already served" is, and 
subtracting the two numbers, to get the FOAP.  So instead of keeping the 
FOAP secret, wait for me on this, what the USPTO does is ... reveal the 
secret FOAP to the applicant.

If the case is in the 2900 cesspool instead of the Central Docket 
cesspool, then what would need to happen is for Tech Center 2900 to come 
out and say how it decides to release cases from the fake Art Unit 
2900.  As far as I can see, this is not tied directly to 
classification.  There seems to be some much more complicated decision 
process within 2900 as to how management decides which case goes to 
which Art Unit.  I have heard design practitioners speculate that this 
may be tied to country of origin for the case, or tied to key words 
appearing in the title, or tied to whether the drawings are 
old-fashioned draftsperson drawings or are photographs or color, or tied 
to whether it looks like an expensive consumer electronic device for 
which lots of NPL is available (e.g. a smart phone or a notebook computer).

But anyway, at least for the Central Docket cases, the USPTO already has 
its secret FOAP number, and this number could simply be shared with the 
applicant.
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