[Patentcenter] [Assignmentcenter] Assignment docs (temporarily?) not accessible via AssignmentCenter
Gerry Peters
gerrypeters at jttpatent.com
Wed May 22 19:52:13 EDT 2024
On the topic of unhelpful banners/warnings about intermittent problems
with PatentCenter/AssignmentCenter functionality, here is one that
currently appears (at least for me regarding a recently recorded
assignment) when one does a seach for an assignment:
> Maintenance Notification: The API Assignment Search feature is not
> available at this time as this feature is undergoing maintenance
> activities.
I think (but am not sure) that this may have something to do with the
fact that recorded assignment documents themselves are (temporarily?)
not accessible from AssignmentCenter as they used to be via clickable
link; but if so, this is another example of a warning that only has
meaning for the person who wrote it, and not the people who it might
actually help if only they understood what it was trying to say.
Or it could be that AssignmentCenter in its wisdom has decided that
the public no longer needs to be able to view the actual assignment
document that was recorded and that the presence of this warning is in
fact a meaningless/irrelevant fluke, since all relevant data from the
assignment abstract is confusingly retrievable despite the (temporary?)
inability to view the actual assignment document...
And it also does not help that the warning -- while in red font which
_is_ helpful -- appears in small font at the very bottom of the page
where it is easily missed.
---Gerry
Gerry Peters
U.S. Patent Agent & Japanese Translator
JTT K.K. (OSAKA & TOKYO JAPAN)
JTT PATENT SERVICES, LLC (NH USA)
JTT TRANSLATION SERVICES, LLC (NH USA)
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>> BEGIN MSG ID cf411383-c53e-4227-909b-8a4bf8fddb41 at oppedahl.com <<
Date: Wed, 22 May 2024 04:21:03 -0400
From: Carl Oppedahl via Patentcenter <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
To: users of Patentcenter <patentcenter at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: [Patentcenter] Patent Center eOffice Action will be delayed
May 22, 2024?
There is a banner item that just today got posted to Patent Center's
main screen:
Patent Center eOffice Action will be delayed May 22, 2024 due to
USPTO system maintenance. e-Notifications will begin approximately
at 10am E.T.
I sort of can't figure out why this got singled out as a failing of
Patent Center that needed to get acknowledged. We have all seen
oddities where the Patent Center system is late (by a day or two
sometimes) in letting the practitioner know that outgoing
correspondence got stuck into the IFW file. And we have all seen
oddities where the Patent Center system tells us about something very
important that happened in our patent file that the USPTO wants us to
know about, and we don't get told until days later, or we get told
twice, and the second time we get told is days or weeks after the
fact. And Suzannah noted that apparently the "welcome letter" has
risen to such a level of importance that it gets communicated to the
practitioner a second time, some weeks after the first time it got
communicated.
But now today all of a sudden the Patent Center developers feel that
this particular delay (of a mere few hours) deserves to be singled out
for a special banner item?
And by the way, what is "eOffice Action" exactly, if it is not the
exact same thing as OCN (outgoing correspondence notification)?
There are outgoing correspondence notifications that are for things
other than Office Actions. For example you might be on the receiving
end of a Notice to File Missing Parts, or one of those letters where
they tell you that some NTFMP has been withdrawn. Or a Filing Receipt.
Those OCNs are not (I guess) the same thing as an "eOffice Action".
But does this banner item mean that there will be a several-hour delay
for some OCNs but not others? You will get notified today the 22nd
right away (as usual) about outgoing correspondence that is not an
Office Action, but if the outgoing correspondence is an Office Action,
your notification will arrive several hours late?
In our office, these days we have gotten to the point where our
distrust of the OCNs runs so high that we feel we have no choice but to
log in at Patent Center manually and click around to look for outgoing
correspondence and status changes ourselves. Because we just cannot
trust that we would ever hear about an item of outgoing correspondence
in a timely way by means of an outgoing correspondence notification.
In the old days of PAIR, it seemed to be good enough to do this manual
OC check once, a minute or two past midnight in Virginia, and if there
was any OC, we would see it.
With Patent Center, it seems to be erratic. Some OCs will be visible a
minute or two past midnight, yes. But then if we log back in at Patent
Center several hours past midnight, another dump of OCs seems to have
taken place. And then when banker's hours arrive in Virginia, a third
dump of OCs into IFW will sometimes happen, I guess because USPTO
developers arrive at their desk at 9 or 10AM and sort of notice that a
dumpload of OCs somehow never got posted into IFW so it happens during
banker's hours.
Anyway I thought it was sort of quaint or cute that this particular
delay got singled out for disclosure in a banner item in Patent Center.
But I welcome any comment from a fellow user of Patent Center if they
can shed light on this question of what is "eOffice Action" exactly, if
it is not the exact same thing as an OCN (outgoing correspondence
notification)?
>> END MSG ID cf411383-c53e-4227-909b-8a4bf8fddb41 at oppedahl.com <<
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