[Patentcenter] Faxes to the PTO - some legacy things do work

[Carl Oppedahl]

Thank you for finding this and posting about it.

What a terrible terrible shame that the USPTO has apparently been paying 
for landlines for several thousand in-house physical fax solutions.  The 
landlines were surely costing something like $25 a month per line, and 
there were as many landlines as there were telephone numbers in the 
571-272 telephone exchange.   (Each USPTO person who is allocated a 
voice line like 571-272-xxxx has been allocated a corresponding fax line 
like 571-273-xxxx.)

We are surely looking at something like two or three million dollars per 
year.  All of which comes out of the pockets of our clients, mind you.

It takes only a few mouse clicks to find that a modern fax solution can 
save a lot of money compared to the kind of legacy solution employed by 
the USPTO.  Our firm's central fax number costs us $1.99 per month (see 
https://voip.ms/business/pricing ).  I will note that $1.99 is a lot 
less than $25, for those who are keeping score at home.  It gives us our 
faxes as PDF files, which is surely what the USPTO would want for its 
internal workflows.  The total bill is $1.99 per month, plus about 3¢ 
per minute for the inbound faxes.

If the USPTO ends up selecting any other provider that charges more than 
about $2 per month, they are getting ripped off.



On 2/9/2024 2:10 PM, Sandra L Etherton wrote:
>
> Now that the fax option to submit documents has been hard down for 
> days, I started researching how this could happen.
>
> Per FedScoop, the Patent Office sent out an RFI in September 2023 to 
> switch from RightFax to a cloud solution for faxes. Did the Patent 
> Office already switch? Is that what’s causing the current fax outage?
>
> The irony or prophecy is in the second line of the article, link below:
>
> “While the current USPTO fax system, RightFax, has only had one outage 
> in 18 years, the system remains at risk for a larger disruption that 
> could get in the way of the office’s handling of public customer 
> document submissions”
>
> https://fedscoop.com/patent-and-trademark-office-looks-to-bring-faxing-to-the-cloud/
>
> Links to the RFI are at the bottom of this page:
>
> https://sam.gov/opp/0e651e45f4e1474cbd1ac0fb0914856a/view
>
> Sandra
>
> *______________________*
>
> *Sandra L Etherton*
>
> Registered U.S. Patent Attorney
>
> *ETHERTON LAW GROUP, LLC***
>
> tel: (602) 681-3331 | fax:  (602) 681-3339
>
> email: sandra at ethertonlaw.com <mailto:sandra at ethertonlaw.com>
>
> www.ethertonlaw.com <http://www.ethertonlaw.com>
>
> *From:*Patentcenter [mailto:patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com] 
> *On Behalf Of *Carl Oppedahl via Patentcenter
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 18, 2024 10:01 AM
> *To:* For bug reports, feature requests, and tips and tricks about 
> Patent Center. <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Cc:* Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [Patentcenter] Faxes to the PTO - some legacy things do 
> work
>
> Yeah, I imagine most practitioners do always file the declaration with 
> the application.  I imagine I am quite out of the ordinary, having to 
> hand in inventors' declarations later.
>
> What happens to me is, I keep fiddling with the text of the patent 
> application, particularly the claims, with multiple version changes 
> leading up to the moment, late in the day on the last possible day, 
> that I click "submit" and e-file it at the patent office.
>
> The inventor declaration of course is tied to the notion that the 
> signer has reviewed the patent application that is going to be filed, 
> and agrees that he or she is an inventor thereof.  But in my case, 
> given that the exact wording of the application kept wriggling around 
> until the very end, there is no way the inventor could be expected to 
> sign such a thing until after the wriggling had ceased.  Which means, 
> no way could the inventor even sign the declaration until 
> chronologically after the filing of the application had taken place.
>
> Yet another thing that happens to me is, the instructions come in from 
> foreign instructing counsel to please get something filed at the 
> USPTO.  So I prepare inventor declarations and send them to 
> instructing counsel.  The signed declarations do not arrive until some 
> days later, long after the US patent application got filed.  Which 
> means, no way could I managed to file the declaration with the 
> application.
>
> On 1/18/2024 8:49 AM, Randall Svihla via Patentcenter wrote:
>
>     We always file the declaration with the application.
>
>     *From:*Patentcenter <patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com>
>     <mailto:patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> *On Behalf Of
>     *Roger Browdy via Patentcenter
>     *Sent:* Thursday, January 18, 2024 10:34 AM
>     *To:* For bug reports, feature requests, and tips and tricks about
>     Patent Center. <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
>     <mailto:patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
>     *Cc:* Roger Browdy <RLBrowdy at browdyneimark.com>
>     <mailto:RLBrowdy at browdyneimark.com>
>     *Subject:* Re: [Patentcenter] Faxes to the PTO - some legacy
>     things do work
>
>     I don’t think it is a joke.  I bet there was a huge volume of
>     applications filed Tuesday night to avoid the DOCX tax.  We had to
>     file one late at night and had a hell of a time trying to do so. 
>     Couldn’t file the assignment/dec forms with EPAS because of the
>     problems and couldn’t get back into PC to file the declaration
>     directly, so have to pay the surcharge for late filing of
>     declaration because of the PTO problems.  In a fair world, we
>     would be able to get that refunded.
>
>     Roger
>
>     *From:*Patentcenter <patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com>
>     <mailto:patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> *On Behalf Of
>     *Patent Lawyer via Patentcenter
>     *Sent:* Thursday, January 18, 2024 10:25 AM
>     *To:* For bug reports, feature requests, and tips and tricks about
>     Patent Center. <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
>     <mailto:patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
>     *Cc:* Patent Lawyer <patentlawyer995 at gmail.com>
>     <mailto:patentlawyer995 at gmail.com>
>     *Subject:* [Patentcenter] Faxes to the PTO - some legacy things do
>     work
>
>     There was recent discussion about faxes to the PTO and return
>     faxes from the PTO.
>
>     Because of yesterday’s shit show with Patent Center and because of
>     other deficiencies in Patent Center, I had to fax four separate
>     submissions to the PTO last night.
>
>     I did receive acknowledgment faxes back from the PTO for each
>     submission.   So, that legacy functionality is still there, and it
>     still worked for me. (I hope the PTO lurkers on this list don’t go
>     and turn it off!)
>
>     I use a service called eFax.  It is not free.
>
>     PS. I am still laughing at Sandra E’s joke about DDOS being just
>     normal filers filing in a volume the system can’t handle.
>
>
>
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