[Patentcenter] Third Party Submissions

[Irving Fishman]

In trying to file a third party submission the blocks to fill in by drop down menus include a “citation type” which gives you specific selection only, one of which is “foreign patent document”.  On selecting this, the next screen gives you a required drop down of “Country code” however, the list does (as of December 19, 2023) not include any of the regional offices (EPO, ARIPO, or OAPI, etc).  EBC only advised that they could “escalate the question” and were no immediate help even after advising that I was close to the deadline for filing the particular third party submission.  A supervisor merely shunted me over to Application Assistance Unit.  At least there, people were sympathetic and went through the various screens and confirmed I was right, there was no applicable country code (a required field) for WO or EPO or other regional patent document, but that there was nothing they could do.  I finally gambled and listed the WO document under “non-patent literature” and in the citation gave a statement as to why I listed the document there.
Two days later I spoke to Examiner Tamai who issues the notices of whether the submission is or is not compliant and he advised that he would not issue a “non-compliant” notice under the circumstances described.  This morning (12/30/2023) I went back into the system and it still does not have any listing under country codes for WO or EPO or other regional office patent documents, but there is a listing for “stateless” and a listing for “not provided”, which are really not applicable.  You would think that in the first instance, the regional offices would be in the list and that if they could add “stateless” and “not provided” they could specifically added WO, EPO, and the other regional offices.
So when in doubt, stich your reference citation into the non-patent literature group and explain.

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