[Patentcenter] ID.me and Patent Center?

[Carl Oppedahl]

A banner item that recently got posted /*in Patent Center*/ by the 
Patent Center developers says this:

    *ID.me is currently available in MyUSPTO.gov for Trademark filers
    only.* Patent Center will be ready to support the ID.me verification
    process by the end of June, 2024.

I sort of can't figure out what the Patent Center developers are trying 
to say here. For one thing, I can't figure out why the Patent Center 
developers would post something in Patent Center that relates to 
trademark activity.

For a second thing, there is no such thing as "myUSPTO.gov". There is no 
DNS entry for the domain name "myuspto.gov".  I guess they mean 
"my.uspto.gov".  Out of curiosity I surfed over to my.uspto.gov and saw 
this banner item that recently got posted by the my.uspto.gov developers:

    ID.ME is available for Trademark filers only. Patents has not
    implemented the digital identity proofing process at USPTO.

I am sort of baffled in my effort to guess what the problem is for which 
these banner items are (supposedly) the solution.  Here is my best guess ...

It is true that on the trademark side, there had been some USPTO 
postings about how if you want to be able to do TEAS things, you have to 
prove you are a human being, except if you are already a registered 
patent practitioner, you get a pass on having to prove that you are a 
human being to be able to do TEAS things.  The TEAS developers never 
quite came out and said what is going on here, but I guess they figured 
if you are a registered patent practitioner, then at some time in the 
past you sort of proved you were already a human being.  I guess this is 
whole "prove you are a human being or we won't let you use TEAS any 
more" is part of the effort by the people in the Commissioner for 
Trademarks office to combat the trademark filings from a certain foreign 
country, that sort of thing.

But that does not quite explain what the problem is for which these 
banner items are (supposedly) the solution.  On the patent side, we do 
have this business of "sponsoring" a paralegal and only if the paralegal 
has been "sponsored" by a patent practitioner is the paralegal able to 
do stuff as a logged-in person in Patent Center.  If I recall correctly, 
one thing that happens when the registered practitioner does the 
clicking around to "sponsor" the paralegal is that the practitioner is 
required to certify that the paralegal is an actual human being.

Maybe what is going on is that the Commissioner for Patents office 
people have decided that they don't trust the registered practitioner to 
be telling the truth when they say that the paralegal that they are 
"sponsoring" really is a human being? They want the paralegal to be 
forced to do the ID.me thing, so that the ID.me service provider has 
checked out the "really a human being" status of the paralegal?

Or maybe what has been going on is that patent-sponsored paralegals have 
been phoning up the EBC, begging to please be allowed to be put through 
the wringer that is ID.me?  They see the trademark-sponsored paralegals 
who get to have the honor and fun of being put through the ID.me 
wringer, and they feel left out?

Anyway, I am hoping somebody who is more plugged into this 
"sponsor-a-paralegal" stuff can shed some light on this.

Carl

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