[Patentpractice] Feedback document mis-placing comments

[Carl Oppedahl]

On 12/17/2024 10:48 AM, William Slate via Patentpractice wrote:
>
> A comment read:
>
> “This claim appears to not end with a period.”
>
> The area highlighted by the comment was a hard return between claims 7 
> and 8.
>
> I found a period missing at the end of claim 9.
>
> Will
>
Let's sort of summarize where we are on this.

Anybody who chooses to (incur the risks of using) use DOCX as their 
filing method is putting himself or herself at the mercy of the USPTO's 
proprietary DOCX rendering engine.  Which as of some months ago was up 
to version 18, something like that.

What we see here is an example of that engine being flaky at 
application-filing time.  And yes I have seen many other instances of 
the DOCX rendering engine being flaky at application-filing time, in 
other ways.

What stares me in the face is that this same engine is presumably the 
black box that will typeset the patent application for issuance, at some 
later time down the line.  By then it might be version 24 or version 
36.  And it might render a square root sign as a smiley face or might 
render a Greek letter mu as a "u".

Meanwhile I imagine there are many practitioners who have been ducking 
the DOCX risks, assuming that the "ongoing safeguard" of the auxiliary 
PDF will somehow permit the practitioner to avert what would otherwise 
be a malpractice claim.

But see 
https://blog.oppedahl.com/maybe-uspto-will-clarify-the-docx-safeguard/ 
.  The USPTO has not answered that letter yet, despite almost a year 
having passed.  I suggest that it would be a mistake, given the USPTO's 
deafening silence in response to questions about the "ongoing 
safeguard", to assume that the auxiliary PDF will protect against 
malpractice claims.


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