[Patentcenter] fax receipt from Patent Office?

[Randall Svihla]

What about those instances when you are required to use a deposit account, such as when filing a QPIDS IDS?

Best regards,

Randall S. Svihla
NSIP Law
Washington, D.C.


From: Patentcenter <patentcenter-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Sandra L Etherton via Patentcenter
Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2024 11:38 AM
To: 'Dan Feigelson' <djf at iliplaw.com>; 'For bug reports, feature requests, and tips and tricks about Patent Center.' <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Sandra L Etherton <sandra at ethertonlaw.com>
Subject: Re: [Patentcenter] fax receipt from Patent Office?

Yet another reason we use credit cards instead of a deposit account. Much better from a cash management standpoint, among other reasons.



From: Dan Feigelson [mailto:djf at iliplaw.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 3, 2024 11:05 PM
To: For bug reports, feature requests, and tips and tricks about Patent Center. <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Sandra L Etherton <sandra at ethertonlaw.com>
Subject: Re: [Patentcenter] fax receipt from Patent Office?


I wouldn't worry about the PTO losing money on interest. As Carl has noted many times, it forces people to grant it interest-free loans in the form of deposit accounts, which are the only way of paying certain fees and must maintain a $1000 balance to avoid the PTO deducting $25 at the end of each month. So either the PTO is collecting the nominal interest rate on the deposit (which can be substantially larger than $1000), or it collects interest (from the user) in excess of 2.5% per month. If that's not a racket I don't know what is.

On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 2:52 AM Sandra L Etherton via Patentcenter <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com<mailto:patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>> wrote:
An update from Dec 18 fax event:

Several people emailed me outside of this listserve about whether they regularly got a faxback receipts from the PTO. Some said yes; some said no. Thank you all for your input.

I never did get a faxback receipt from the Patent Office, but the credit card charge went through for the fees about 48 hours after I faxed it in.* As Carl said, follow the money! The new POA and petition have not been uploaded, though, and the patent still shows as expired for failing to timely pay the maintenance fee.

*I suspect there’s damage to the public and PTO because fees were not deposited timely due to Patent Center not accepting e-filing for this. Instead, the fees were charged two days later than they could have been. I’m no cash management guru, but I assume the PTO gets paid interest on its deposits. Hypothetically, with simple 3% interest on $1640 fee for 2 days, the Patent Office lost ~$0.25 in interest on my submission. That adds up if fees for many submissions aren’t being deposited as quickly as they had been when EFS was live.

Sandra
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