[Patentpractice] Assignment Center - can you save progress part way through? No

[Dan Feigelson]

So many "improvements" to its IT in such a short time...I think the PTO
should put a big "NEW AND IMPROVED" banner across its website, the same way
that detergent or breakfast cereal or fertilizer manufacturers do on their
products when they make the packages smaller and raise the price per
package at the same time.

Dan

On Tue, Feb 6, 2024 at 1:23 PM James Katz via Patentpractice <
patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> wrote:

> So we have now found that Assignment Center appears to “silently”
> automatically save in-process submissions.  We have tested abandoning a
> submission at various screens, including at the final submission screen and
> have found that our progress was saved and we could return later to
> complete the submission.
>
>
>
> So in order to implement a second pair of eyes on submissions, our
> assistants will stop once they reach the submit screen, return to the home
> screen, go back in to the saved submission and print the completed cover
> sheet to PDF, they will then email that PDF to the attorney along with a
> copy of the assignment document that was uploaded.  The attorney will
> review and respond with approval after which the assistant will go back in
> and submit.  At least one downside to this approach is that the attorney
> will be unable to review the actual uploaded assignment document.  So if
> the wrong document was uploaded, but the right document was attached to the
> email for review, the attorney will not know.
>
>
>
> Another solution we considered but discarded was to create a dedicated
> MyUSPTO account for assignment submissions to which everyone has access.
> This would allow one to go in and review a saved submission.  However, not
> only would this be cumbersome to have to log out of one’s personal MyUSPTO
> account and into another (and maintain two 2FA entries, etc.), it was also
> unclear if multiple users could be logged in to the same account at once. I
> also did not check if this would violate some PTO TOS somewhere.
>
>
>
> Another thing we have found is that when entering multiple email addresses
> to receive submission confirmations, etc., each recipient will receive an
> email addressed only to them. So from that email you cannot tell who the
> other recipients are.  Furthermore, the email itself, e.g., the subject
> line and body, do not identify the application number or client/matter.
> Only the id number assigned to the submission by Assignment Center is
> identified.  You have to open up the attached cover sheet document to see
> the application number.
>
>
>

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