[Patentpractice] FW: some initial reactions to the USPTO's training slides for son-of-EPAS

Fri Feb 2 11:37:38 EST 2024

I got on EPAS last night and saw a notice that EPAS would be down starting at 9 AM today and that the new system would be up starting on Monday. 

I was able to retrieve the notice from my browser cache:

On Friday, February 2, 2024 we will begin system maintenance starting at 9:00 am.

Assignment Recordation Branch will do an upgrade to EPAS and ETAS and will be unavailable.

In addition, will not be able to check status on assignment documents.  

All assignment systems will reopen at 8:30 am Monday, February 5, 2024.

On February 5, 2024 the new Assignment Center webpage will be available for use, and

Call Center agents will be available for any questions.

The EPAS website will no longer be available and you will be redirected to the new Assignment Center website.

Please bookmark the new website.

The new webpage will replace epas.uspto.gov and will provide a modernized experience for

transferring ownership or changing the name on your patent application registration.

-Bruce Young

(712) 541-9822

From: Patentpractice <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com <mailto:patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> > On Behalf Of Watt, Rachel S. via Patentpractice
Sent: Friday, February 2, 2024 10:04 AM
To: For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> >
Cc: Watt, Rachel S. <Rwatt at hodgsonruss.com <mailto:Rwatt at hodgsonruss.com> >
Subject: Re: [Patentpractice] some initial reactions to the USPTO's training slides for son-of-EPAS

So we cannot record Assignments today? I’ve been on the phone with EBC for about 20 minutes and they cannot tell me why the EPAS is not working. I see ETAS is also not working. The son-of-EPAS is not available until Feb. 5.

I’m really just venting, but wanted to share in case someone needs to file an Assignment today.

I filed a new application and hit the “File an assignment of ownership” button to get:

>From uspto.gov, hit the Record Assignment button to get:

From: Patentpractice <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com <mailto:patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> > On Behalf Of Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2024 3:07 AM
To: For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> >
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com <mailto:carl at oppedahl.com> >
Subject: Re: [Patentpractice] some initial reactions to the USPTO's training slides for son-of-EPAS

External Email - Use Caution 

  _____  

Yes, thank you for posting.  Yes I think you are right about this.

What's unfortunate is I am not able to see any way for workplace coordination among colleagues.  In the old system you could send the "saved submission" link to a colleague, for purposes of Second Pair of Eyes or whatever.  In the new system it looks like that capability is gone.  The only person who can see a submission is the exact person who created it, I am guessing.

On 1/30/2024 8:04 AM, James Katz wrote:

Looking more closely at the screens, it seems that there may be some ability to save in-process submissions. The status screen includes filters on the left hand side for “saved”, etc.:

And steps 1-3 (slides 21-27) each show a “save & continue” button at the bottom. But for Step 4 (slide 28) and beyond, so such save button is presented.  It is probably too much to hope that the system auto-saves the submission after each press of  “continue” but you never know!  So we will have to wait and see how it really works …

Jim

James L. Katz

patent attorney
312.854.8372 ▪ direct
312.291.0864 ▪ fax
 <mailto:jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com> jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com

LEMPIA SUMMERFIELD KATZ LLC

20 south clark street, suite 600 ▪ chicago, illinois 60603  ▪  <http://www.lsk-iplaw.com/> www.lsk-iplaw.com

Please note:   This message is intended for the individual or entity named above and may constitute a privileged and confidential communication.  If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy, use, or disclose this message.  Please notify the sender by replying to this message, and then delete the message from your system.  Thank you.

From: Patentpractice  <mailto:patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf of Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice  <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2024 at 2:22 AM
To: For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice.  <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Carl Oppedahl  <mailto:carl at oppedahl.com> <carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: Re: [Patentpractice] some initial reactions to the USPTO's training slides for son-of-EPAS

And yes how sad that on slide 24 we see that the designers of son-of-EPAS completely wrongly assume that an assignment of a patent or patent application could include "the goodwill".

Thank you Richard for posting.

Yes if even a tiny bit of beta testing had been offered for actual money-paying customers of the USPTO, this could have been corrected in beta test.

On 1/29/2024 7:33 PM, Richard Schafer via Patentpractice wrote:

What a mess! Once again, the PTO tosses out a fait accompli of a system with lots of problems that could have been avoided with good prior review by reasonable interested parties. 

Now to the slides. As with Patent Center, the PTO seems to assume that everyone works on a large screen all the time. And they’ve split what was a single screen into multiple screens in multiple places, which increases the interactions between the browser and the IPAS system needlessly.

Clearly, these slides have been rushed out without any significant proofreading, since there are so many errors. Including, amusingly enough, on slide 54 some lorem ipsum text. And supposed patent assignment forms that talk about assigning “the entire interest and the goodwill.”

On page 27, the phone number is listed as optional, even though in the screenshot it’s marked as required with an asterisk, Which is it?

By the way, on page 30, the new “Conveying party summary” page (now a new full page instead of a small box on the entry page) shows the citizenship of the conveying party as Australian. But there’s nothing on slide 29 where the conveying individual is identified that allows entering his or her citizenship. So where does the PTO get that information? Is it really necessary for recording an assignment? (Oh, sorry, that’s now the stupid neologism “applying for an assignment”) In EPAS, the citizenship of the conveyor wasn’t requested but in ETAS it is. Since this is supposedly a patent assignment example, I’m hoping they simply mixed in the wrong slide instead of now requiring citizenship for patent conveyors.

On page 33, we see that citizenship is now part of the request for entity conveying party info, but it’s not indicated as either optional or required by the slide remarks, but presumably is optional since it’s now marked with an asterisk on the screenshot. But notice that there’s no place to indicate State citizenship for the entity, only Country, unless they’ve confusingly combined the two under the Country name.

Why, in heaven’s name, does signing the “application” require two web pages? Why do we need to click a button to see the signature fields?

There is now a way to delete a conveying party that has been entered as a separate option from editing the conveying party. I like that; it’s better than one click to edit and then a follow-up click to remove.

The handling of recording a merger (or is that supposed to be “applying for a merger”?) is peculiar. They make a big deal in the slides of a new way of entering the “Result of Merger” entity name. But why is that entity a Conveying Party? If A merges into B, and A and B are both conveying parties, then who is the receiving party? This makes no sense at all!

This whole system feels very slap-dash, sadly.

Best regards,
Richard A. Schafer | Schafer IP Law
P.O. Box 230081 | Houston, TX 77223
M: 832.283.6564 |  <mailto:richard at schafer-ip.com> richard at schafer-ip.com

From: Patentpractice  <mailto:patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> On Behalf Of Goldberg, Judi via Patentpractice
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2024 6:42 PM
To: For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice.  <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Goldberg, Judi  <mailto:jgoldberg at leydig.com> <jgoldberg at leydig.com>
Subject: Re: [Patentpractice] some initial reactions to the USPTO's training slides for son-of-EPAS

WHAAATTT?????????  The two things that made this easy, saved me time, reduced the likelihood of errors – THEY TOOK AWAY????  Next you’ll tell me that I can’t include my own email in the correspondence section in addition to our docket department, so I get notifications directly.  

So glad retirement is around the corner.

:( Judi

From: Patentpractice <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com <mailto:patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> > On Behalf Of Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2024 5:40 PM
To: For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek legal advice. <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> >
Cc: Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com <mailto:carl at oppedahl.com> >
Subject: Re: [Patentpractice] some initial reactions to the USPTO's training slides for son-of-EPAS

[External Email]

Oh and while we are on the subject of missing features, it looks like there is no way to use a "template" to save selected fields for re-use in a future recordation submission.

On 1/29/2024 4:05 PM, James Katz via Patentpractice wrote:

It also seems that they removed any ability to “save progress” or otherwise save a submission for review before it is submitted.  

So there goes our workflow where our assistants upload an assignment and save it before submission, then forward the EPAS link to the attorney for review before the assistant then submits.

Jim

James L. Katz

patent attorney
312.854.8372 ▪ direct
312.291.0864 ▪ fax
 <mailto:jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com> jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com

LEMPIA SUMMERFIELD KATZ LLC

20 south clark street, suite 600 ▪ chicago, illinois 60603  ▪  <http://www.lsk-iplaw.com/> www.lsk-iplaw.com

Please note:   This message is intended for the individual or entity named above and may constitute a privileged and confidential communication.  If you are not the intended recipient, please do not read, copy, use, or disclose this message.  Please notify the sender by replying to this message, and then delete the message from your system.  Thank you.

From: Patentpractice  <mailto:patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf of Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice  <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Date: Monday, January 29, 2024 at 4:57 PM
To: patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>   <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
Cc: Carl Oppedahl  <mailto:carl at oppedahl.com> <carl at oppedahl.com>
Subject: [Patentpractice] some initial reactions to the USPTO's training slides for son-of-EPAS

Cumbersome login now required.  It used to be that anybody could submit an assignment for recordation.  Now you have to do a cumbersome login with two-factor authentication.  I suspect this means the person doing the recordation session will have previously been forced to do a Real ID or other invasive prove-who-you-are procedure.

Stupid terminology.  The designer of son-of-EPAS calls the recordation session "filing an application".  This is nuts.  

No functional enhancements for the paying customer.  After all this big talk about how wonderful this son-of-EPAS system is going to be, I clicked around a bit to try to see what functional enhancements it is going to provide.  For example I figured the least they would do is make it so that you can check the status of a recordation submission.  Nope.  No enhancements of any kind so far as I can see.

Blocks you from including an application number that they can't find in their system.  It looks like if your patent application is not in Patentcenter, you will be blocked from including it in your recordation submission.  I suspect this means it will be impossible to record against a PCT application filed in an Office that is not the RO/US.

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