[Patentcenter] Declarations and DOCX filing

[Carl Oppedahl]

On 1/18/2024 2:35 PM, Krista Jacobsen via Patentcenter wrote:
>  In California, attorneys are not allowed to ask clients to 
> prospectively waive malpractice claims, but it seems to me that it 
> should be ethical for an attorney to get a client to agree in writing 
> that as long as the attorney uploaded the DOCX file that the client 
> approved, the client could agree ahead of time, in writing, that what 
> the USPTO does to the file or its content after the upload (including 
> generation of the new DOCX file, which Carl calls D2) is not the 
> attorney's responsibility. In other words, the client has explicitly 
> instructed the attorney not to do the line-by-line reviews and is 
> assuming all risk of USPTO-introduced problems/errors during the 
> generation of the D2 file from the approved D1 file and everything 
> else bad that could happen as a result of the application having been 
> submitted as DOCX.


I suppose the thing to do is draft up a document that says this, and go 
to the California ethics body, and ask for a ruling that it is okay for 
California attorneys to ask their clients to sign.

If the ethics body says it is okay, then great.

If the ethics body says no, it is not allowed, then we show it to the 
USPTO and say "look what a mess you made".

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