[Patentpractice] Assignment Center - can you save progress part way through? No
Carl Oppedahl
carl at oppedahl.com
Wed Feb 7 03:22:37 EST 2024
What Richard said. And recall that for each account, the USPTO uses a
particular data field to keep extremely close track of whether the
accountholder has or has not shown a photo ID and so on to prove exactly
who they are. And the various USPTO systems then permit or deny access
depending on the status of that data field. There has been a "system
creep" of the use of that field, most recently for access to the TEAS
functions. I would be astonished if the system creep were to do
anything other than eventually reach all USPTO systems that use any kind
of login. And I would also be astonished if the system creep requiring
user login were to do anything other than to eventually reach nearly all
USPTO systems.
Meaning, if you were to try to use a single account as if it were a
multi-person role-based account, it would quickly come to light in the
USPTO login/authentication workflow.
Coming back around to the starting point of the earlier poster, what all
of this means is that if the USPTO were to set a goal of being nice to
its paying customers, the USPTO would from the beginning of each
software initiative) design into the system collaborative workflow,
project sharing, access sharing, second-pair-of eyes sharing, and so on.
The challenge is that as a general rule, such "sharing" functions need
to have been designed in from the very beginnings of the system design.
It is almost always nearly impossible to "add in" these kinds of sharing
functions in any sensible way if you wait until long after the system is
fully designed and deployed and only then try to do it.
To give an example of doing it right, the ePCT system was designed from
the very outset so that an eOwner could selectively give access to
selected applications to others, including giving eOwner access to
others. From the outset, there was the ability to "share" an address
book of frequently used inventor names, applicant names, and so on.
From the outset, it was (and still is) the ability to pick and choose
levels of access (eViewer, eOwner, eEditor) to give to various
colleagues, clients, inventors and so on. From the outset, the group of
people being given any particular level of access could be specifically
tied to individual choices about particular applications (not linked in
any required all-or-nothing way to "all files having a particular
customer number" or "all files that I the attorney get to see when I log
in").
In Patent Center, if you as an attorney have access to, say, 2037
applications, and if you decide to "sponsor" a particular paralegal,
then the only choice is, that paralegal gets access to 2037
applications. It is impossible for you the attorney to be selective
about which of those 2037 applications the paralegal has access to.
In Assignment Center it is, apparently, impossible to give any kind of
access in your own workbench to any colleague. No shared access for
workflow, no shared access for sharing "stored data".
And the problem is that if the software developer failed to design in
any kind of shared access starting at the beginning, it almost always
turns out to be either impossible, or only very clunky, to try to graft
on any shared access to another person.
To give another example of USPTO getting it wrong on "shared acccess",
look at Financial Manager (FM). If a new employee starts work with your
firm and needs to be given "shared access", then the click path to
onboard that new employee in FM is some number of clicks (these days
around eight clicks) times the number of payment methods. So if you
have, say, ten payment methods, then the onboarding process is eighty
mouse clicks. It is impossible to tell FM with just a few mouse clicks
"give this new person access to the following selected seven payment
methods" or "give this person access to all of our firm's payment
methods". When an employee has a "last day of work", the process in FM
to turn off that employee's access to all of the ten payment methods
will be ... sorry to say ... a corresponding eighty mouse clicks.
All because the setup of FM, from the outset, failed to be smart about
how shared access would work.
In contrast, in ePCT, the "last day of work" click path is only a few
mouse clicks regardless of the number of applications involved. But
this is the case only because the designers of ePCT had designed that
system from day one to have sensible shared access.
On 2/6/2024 2:44 PM, Richard Schafer via Patentpractice wrote:
>
> I’m pretty sure that the PTO rules require every account to be for a
> single person only and disallow this kind of role-based multi-person
> account.
>
> Best regards,
> *Richard A. Schafer | Schafer IP Law*
> P.O. Box 230081 | Houston, TX 77223
> M: 832.283.6564 | richard at schafer-ip.com <mailto:richard at schafer-ip.com>
>
> *From:* Patentpractice <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> *On
> Behalf Of *James Katz via Patentpractice
> *Sent:* Tuesday, February 6, 2024 5:21 AM
> *To:* For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek
> legal advice. <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Cc:* James Katz <jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [Patentpractice] Assignment Center - can you save
> progress part way through? No
>
> 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.
>
> Jim
>
> *James L. Katz*
>
> patent attorney
> 312.854.8372 ▪ direct
> 312.291.0864 ▪ fax
> jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com <mailto:jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com>
>
> *LEMPIA SUMMERFIELD KATZ LLC*
>
> 20 south clark street, suite 600 ▪ chicago, illinois 60603 ▪
> www.lsk-iplaw.com <http://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 <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on
> behalf of Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice
> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Date: *Monday, February 5, 2024 at 10:57 PM
> *To: *For patent practitioners. This is not for laypersons to seek
> legal advice. <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Cc: *Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
> *Subject: *[Patentpractice] Assignment Center - can you save progress
> part way through? No
>
> Nope, it turns out to be impossible to save the submission package
> part way through. See
> https://blog.oppedahl.com/some-of-the-defects-in-the-new-assignment-center/
> .
>
> On 1/29/2024 4:15 PM, Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice wrote:
>
> Yes, it looks like that.
>
> It looks like */if the exact same person/* wants to save progress
> and come back, they maybe can do that. There is one extremely
> blurry slide toward the beginning of the slide deck that gives the
> impression that you can do that. But it looks like it is
> impossible to pass a partially completed filing project over to a
> colleague for a "second pair of eyes". Or to pass it to a
> colleague for e-signature.
>
> 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
> jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com <mailto:jkatz at lsk-iplaw.com>
>
> *LEMPIA SUMMERFIELD KATZ LLC*
>
> 20 south clark street, suite 600 ▪ chicago, illinois 60603 ▪
> www.lsk-iplaw.com <http://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
> <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com>
> <mailto:patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on behalf
> of Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice
> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
> <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Date: *Monday, January 29, 2024 at 4:57 PM
> *To: *patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com
> <patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
> <mailto:patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Cc: *Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com> <mailto: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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