[Patentpractice] Assignment Center is broken for IPv6

[Carl Oppedahl]

Thank you everybody for reporting on this.

I tried it again on Chrome just now and same error message. Tried it 
with https and with http.  In Chrome, I cleared all USPTO-related 
cookies.  Tried it again with https and with http. Still no joy.

Tried it in Edge.  Nope, no joy.

Tried it in Firefox.   Nope, no joy.

The various browsers puke on assignmentcenter.uspto.gov with an error 
message that sounds like a TLS version fail or an SSL cert 
chain-of-trust fail.

Just now I used the Qualys SSLabs tester to test the access to 
assignmentcenter.uspto.gov.  I note with great interest that the Qualys 
tester carries out its testing in two paths -- Assignment Center 
resolves not only to an IPv4 address (151.207.245.82) but also to an 
IPv6 address (2610:20:5011:1604:0:0:0:82).  It crosses my mind that the 
non-identical results among users might be because some are using IPv6 
and others are using IPv4 to reach Assignment Center.

The Qualys tests finished just now.  For both paths (the IPv4 and the 
IPv6) Qualys gives a grade of "B" for the quality of USPTO's TLS and SSL 
for this domain.  For both paths, the USPTO's HTTPS stack fails to 
provide forward secrecy.  For both paths, the USPTO's HTTPS stack offers 
to negotiate to some very old and weak TLS cipher suites.  And HTTP 
simply fails, for the IPv6 stack. (The IPv6 stack is not set up with HSTS.)

(For those keeping score at home, blog.oppedahl.com gets a grade of "A" 
for the TLS and SSL quality.)

Aha!  The defect in USPTO's systems is now clearer.  I turned off IPv6 
on the network interface of my notebook computer, and now I have no 
difficulty making use of Assignment Center.

The USPTO people don't know how to configure IPv6 correctly for 
Assignment Center.

Time for a blog article I guess.

For those who had difficulty getting Assignment Center to work, the 
question I have for you is, do you have your computer set up to do IPv6 
as well as IPv4?









On 5/7/2024 8:51 AM, Bruce Young via Patentpractice wrote:

> I was just able to record an assignment. I am using Chrome on Windows 10.
>
> -Bruce Young
>
> (712) 541-9822
>
> *From:*Patentpractice <patentpractice-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> *On 
> Behalf Of *Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 7, 2024 9:17 AM
> *To:* patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com
> *Cc:* Carl Oppedahl <carl at oppedahl.com>
> *Subject:* [Patentpractice] Is Assignment Center still broken?
>
> As far as I can see, Assignment Center is still broken.  Are others 
> able to make use of Assignment Center just now?
>
> On 5/7/2024 2:38 AM, Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice wrote:
>
>     Assignment Center is broken.  The system status page
>     https://www.uspto.gov/blog/ebiz/ lists a few systems that have
>     scheduled outages right now (midnight- 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 7
>     ET) but Assignment center is not one of the listed systems.
>
>
>
>
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