[Patentcenter] Third Party Submissions

[Carl Oppedahl]

This inspired this blog article 
<https://blog.oppedahl.com/three-years-later-uspto-developers-repeat-a-coding-mistake/>.

On 12/30/2023 9:28 AM, Carl Oppedahl via Patentcenter wrote:
>
> 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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