[Patentcenter] Third Party Submissions

[Carl Oppedahl]

This is new Patent Center ticket 
https://patentcenter-tickets.oppedahl.com/#CP204 .

On 12/30/2023 9:03 AM, Carl Oppedahl via Patentcenter wrote:
>
> Thank you for posting.  This turns out to be a repeat of the coding 
> blunder that gave us https://patentcenter-tickets.oppedahl.com/#CP9 
> more than three years ago.
>
> It is astonishing that the Patent Center developers would repeat this 
> blunder, which they first made in April of 2020. Back then, it took 
> the developers more than six months to fix the mistake.
>
> What's going on, of course, is that the coders failed to actually look 
> at the EFS-Web code.  if they had, they could have copied over the 
> list of patent offices.  Instead of using a list of /*patent 
> offices*/, the coders were lazy and grabbed some public-domain list of 
> /*countries*/.
>
> The mistake was the the coders assumed that /*patent offices*/ are the 
> same thing as /*countries*/. Which of course they are not.
>
> But the astonishing thing is that the realization in 2020 by the 
> coders that patent offices /*are are not the same thing as */countries 
> got lost.  One assumes that in a mere three years, there has been 
> complete staff turnover among the coders.  One imagines that nobody on 
> the USPTO team today in 2023 was even around back in 2020 when the 
> USPTO coders read my blog article 
> <https://blog.oppedahl.com/six-months-after-bug-report-uspto-fixes-priority-claim-to-ep-applications-in-patentcenter/> 
> and realized that patent offices /*are are not the same thing as 
> */countries.
>
> Actually the blunder is worse than what I just described.  The coders 
> actually grabbed some public-domain list of /*places where you can 
> send mail. */So it includes lots of places that are not even 
> countries, but are mere protectorates or territories of other countries.
>
> The magnitude of this blunder by the USPTO developers is almost 
> without limit.  The drop-down list includes, for example, Wallis and 
> Fortuna, which does not have a patent office.  The drop-down list 
> includes the Aland Islands, which does not have a patent office.  The 
> drop-down list includes the French Southern Territories, which does 
> not have a patent office.  The drop-down list includes the Holy See 
> (the Vatican), which does not have a patent office.
>
> But of course the drop-down list is missing one of the biggest patent 
> offices in the world, the European Patent Office.  And it is missing 
> ARIPO and OAPI and the Eurasian Patent Office.
>
> Irving, what is the EBC ticket number for this?
>
> On 12/30/2023 6:45 AM, Irving Fishman via Patentcenter wrote:
>>
>> 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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